In another episode of overlooked dad things, I’ve mentioned before how in my household, I have the permanent short straw, well in most cases, but in the context of this post, when it comes to the cars we drive.
Technically, I have two cars in my name that I am paying for, and then we have mythical wife’s old car that is free and clear, but is also 13 years old, and comes with all of the anxious hangups that go along with driving around in a 13-year-old vehicle.
This post doesn’t exist if I actually got to daily drive one of the two cars I pay for, which means my daily commuter car is the third car in our household, which on paper really isn’t bad, as it is small and compact, making it ideal for my parking garage that has the smallest fucking parking spaces in existence and gets very good gas mileage, to which my daily commute of maybe 12-13 miles round trip means I’m filling up maybe once a month.
However, like I said, it’s a 13-year-old car. With the overwhelming majority of those years being not mine, which means there’s a lifetime of history and little things that I’m unaware of, service and maintenance that I don’t know how well has been maintained other than the time in which I began to oversee it.
Whereas it was a sturdy, peppy car when mythical wife was mythical girlfriend and we first got together, the car is now 13 years old, and definitely feels its age. Lots of the mechanisms feel tired, the transmission feels slippery and I permanently drive it in manual shift mode to get around all the wonky gear spacing and super revs when sneezing on the gas pedal.
I don’t have the power to overtake anyone that isn’t standing still and have to concede my position way more often than I sometimes care to, and I spend admittedly more time than I probably should, lamenting on the day in which I don’t have to be the one in the third car and might actually get to permanently drive my own car that I don’t have share and adjust every time I get into it.
If it’s idled too long, something overheats or otherwise happens where the revs take on a higher pitch. The tires in the rear are balding and should really be replaced, and the car’s at its time of life in which it’s always a question on whether or not these are the last new tires for them or not. And of course, there’s all sorts of rattles and creaks that even Batman couldn’t identify.
But the absolute worst part of the third car is the horrendous lines of sight for probably anyone over 5’2, because mythical wife had had the car before I drove it regularly and she has no idea what I’m talking about.
The photograph above is what I see when I’m at a stop light – which is not the stop light at all. I have to crane my neck at an uncomfortable angle in order to see the stop light, which really fucking sucks when a light stays red forever, necessitating me to keep my head in an awkward position to ensure that I see it turn green and begin driving accordingly.
At 5’9, I am not as tall as I wish I were, but I wouldn’t classify myself as someone who could be referred to as tall. And yet, even when the seat is as far back as I can and adjusted to be as low as it gets, I’m still in a position to where if I ‘m not the third or further back car in a line of cars, I probably can’t see a traffic light in front of me without craning my neck. Which sucks doubly because I always want to be the first car in a line so that I can drive with nobody in front of me because the existence of other commuters is what ruins the otherwise enjoyable act of driving cars, so I’m often in a position to where I concede sitting behind others, or put myself to where I have to crane my neck in order to monitor the light.
It’s every time I have to sit at a light craning my neck that this post has materialized in my head. It doesn’t happen all the time, and some commutes I’m lucky to where it doesn’t happen at all, but then there are some days and some intersections where I just don’t get so lucky, and I have to sit there looking and feeling absurd as I how I often feel about the whole notion that I’m the one who always seem to have to make all the sacrifices in life for the sake my family.