Car Talk

Is there anyone else in the world who has a guilt response to something going “wrong” with their car?

Maybe it’s because I just don’t understand cars. No, that’s not it. It’s that I don’t really want to understand cars. There are other people on the planet who understand cars. I understand things that the car wizards don’t. I can’t be an expert on everything! And I don’t wanna be!

Here’s what happened. I was doing errands on the first hot weather day we’ve had in a long time. When I went to turn on the air conditioning, it wouldn’t cool. Or didn’t seem to cool. I took the car, whose name, by the way, is Emma, to our garage down the street and they told me they’re not “doing A/C” this year.

It was a long story about a broken and very expensive computer but there it was. I asked if they’d recommend someone who would do A/C. “Oh no, we never recommend anyone else. We don’t know the kind of work they’ll do.” I see.

Is it Miracle on 34th Street where one department store begins recommending a competing department store just so their customers can get what they want? I think so. Nothing doing, here on the A/C front.

Anyway, the weather cooled down and I forgot about it. When my sweetheart got in the car with me, I mentioned the malfunctioning air conditioner. She turned it on, and it worked just fine.

What happened? The truth is that it was probably fine all along and I just hadn’t let it run long enough to cool down. But more, and more importantly, she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t afraid that the A/C didn’t work. She wasn’t afraid that it might need to be fixed. She wasn’t afraid that she’d done something wrong.

There are theories about how our machinery reflects ourselves. What was Emma reflecting to me? It’s pretty simple. It’s a rare reason that’s reason enough to fear—ever!