Thursday, June 20, 2013

My Love/Hate Relationship with My Car


I have a confession…

I’m contemplating thievery. Honestly. Now, hear me out before you start calling the cops to report me. I live in a horrid apartment building. There is a parking lot that is a long line of cars against a fence. Because so many of the people in my building are losers (yes, I’m aware of what this says about me – the rent is cheap, and I moved there when I was a newly single mom, so bugger off), there are 5 vehicles that NEVER. MOVE. Honestly. A few of them have been stationary in the lot for at least a year.

What does this have to do with thievery? I have terrible tires on my car. Really terrible. I have a love/hate relationship with my car in the sense that I love that it’s got 361,000 miles on it and still runs pretty well… and hate in the sense that it’s got 361,000 miles on it and I’ve beat up the exterior and interior so much that my boyfriend refers to it as, ‘The Abortion’. It will go once I can save up enough money to buy a different car, and I’ll be sad when that day comes. Because of the high mileage and the fact that I’m going to replace it as soon as possible with a (hopefully) newer car, I don’t want to spend a ridiculous amount of money for new tires.

So a part of me has started hatching a plan to check the tire sizes on the stationary vehicles and if any of them are the same size – and in better condition than mine – I’m thinking about stealing them. They’re not using them, and the vehicles show no signs of being moved.

I know it’s wrong. I know I shouldn’t do it. But a part of me keeps saying, ‘Why not?’ I’m struggling with my sense of frugality. Unused tires are sitting right there. And on the other side of this argument, these stationary vehicles are parked in such a matter as to cause one to question the owner’s mental facilities. Because they are parked in the most nonsensical way, and it really tends to fuck up the parking space left for the rest of us with running vehicles. So maybe I should do it, as karmic justice. Some days when there’s no parking left when I get home (because some of the local businesses’ employees use it as their parking lot), I want to smash in their windows and key their paint. Surely this is a much less extreme alternative. I could call and have them all towed, but what fun is that?

On a related note, my dad told me I should write to Chevrolet and tell them that one of their vehicles has made it past 361k… I think it’s slightly over 361,400 miles now. And it still runs pretty well. I do love that I can start that beast up in the winter without any issues (in Wisconsin, that’s a huge deal when we start hitting -30). Maybe they’ll give me a new car and all of my plans to steal tires from my crackwhore neighbors will be rendered unnecessary! I’ll still want to key their cars, though.

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