Do you like trivia? I guess.
Can you guess the average number of parts in a car?
Escaped Hubcap
To validate the car’s warranty and prolong the life of the car from wear & tear, my Pop told me to always take my car to the dealership to have the oil changed and repaired.
A professional driver of all things fast, he will never ride on the passenger side. Maybe in an ambulance. Maybe in a hearse.
Also, using cruise control in inclement weather could prove dangerous, he cautioned. The road was overshot with a beautiful iridescence as the slip & slide light switched on across the dashboard. He wasn’t bluffing, so I wrote a note of it on my cuff. (hydroplane in the rain)
Of least importance is what goes on inside my car — I stick my arm entirely out the window, wind is in my hair lashing about, lights switch on across the dashboard, I sway like a hammock to the music of which I know all the words, turn signals flash, my heart runs on all cylinders — it’s like a performance.
Self contained in my little bubble, anchored in by the seatbelt, I noticed the service light switched on across the dashboard. Could this mean trouble?
I took the silver, four door hatchback to Riverside Toyota in Rome, Georgia, before I was stranded and distressed. For a Japanese car, that would be a pity, which is to say, I cultivated a hollow sense of superiority around a car’s make & model. No doubt, I had four tires and four hubcaps when I entered the service garage. Even dogs count to four in hubcap city.
Banksy | Tesco Value Tomato Soup Cans
Getting jipped out of a shoddy job was simply a built-in fee for avoiding hassles, but I returned to Toyota the following week, in search of my lost hubcap. There was an odd one propped against the wall. Could it be mine?
It’s a wonder our world isn’t polluted with hubcaps since the fastest way to escape is in a car.
Can we help you?
I don’t know. When your service crew changed the oil and rotated the tires on my car last week. is it possible they forgot to replace all four hubcaps, or maybe a few were installed wrong? I’m missing a hubcap.
Uhhh, probably. Let me call my manager.
I imagined a minor clash with the manager. There would be this narrative. We can’t replace your hubcap. Why didn’t you check your car before you left the garage? What did you hit? Did you crash the car?
I rehearsed a stagy rebuttal. Am I to go behind your professional crew and inspect their work? Outrageous! I know it’s just a hubcap, but a car holds greater value if it comes out even. Three hubcaps look untidy.
After all this runaround, the parts manager came out onto the asphalt lot, popped a hubcap off the back tire, and said, come back tomorrow and we’ll put a new one on for you.
I sighed and untucked my dress shirt like an ad agent who just closed an important account. |
*On average, there are 30,000
parts in a car. That’s 30,000 possibilities of being an inventor or many ways a car can break down or a $30,000 price tag on the window. How do you see it?
§tacyReneè§weeney 