![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/IMG_3398.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In another episode of overlooked dad things, I\u2019ve 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.<\/span><\/p>\n Technically, I have two cars in my name that I am paying for, and then we have mythical wife\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n This post doesn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019m filling up maybe once a month.<\/span><\/p>\n However, like I said, it\u2019s a 13-year-old car.\u00a0 With the overwhelming majority of those years being not mine, which means there\u2019s a lifetime of history and little things that I\u2019m unaware of, service and maintenance that I don\u2019t know how well has been maintained other than the time in which I began to oversee it.<\/span><\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t have the power to overtake anyone that isn\u2019t 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\u2019t have to be the one in the third car and might actually get to permanently drive my own car that I don\u2019t have share and adjust every time I get into it.<\/span><\/p>\n If it\u2019s idled too long, something overheats or otherwise happens where the revs take on a higher pitch.\u00a0 The tires in the rear are balding and should really be replaced, and the car\u2019s at its time of life in which it\u2019s always a question on whether or not these are the last new tires for them or not.\u00a0 And of course, there\u2019s all sorts of rattles and creaks that even Batman couldn\u2019t identify.<\/span><\/p>\n But the absolute worst part of the third car is the horrendous lines of sight for probably anyone over 5\u20192, because mythical wife had had the car before I drove it regularly and she has no idea what I\u2019m talking about.<\/span><\/p>\n The photograph above is what I see when I\u2019m at a stop light \u2013 which is not the stop light at all.\u00a0 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.<\/span><\/p>\n At 5\u20199, I am not as tall as I wish I were, but I wouldn\u2019t classify myself as someone who could be referred to as tall.\u00a0 And yet, even when the seat is as far back as I can and adjusted to be as low as it gets, I\u2019m still in a position to where if I \u2018m not the third or further back car in a line of cars, I probably can\u2019t see a traffic light in front of me without craning my neck.\u00a0 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\u2019m 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.<\/span><\/p>\n It’s every time I have to sit at a light craning my neck that this post has materialized in my head.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t happen all the time, and some commutes I\u2019m lucky to where it doesn\u2019t happen at all, but then there are some days and some intersections where I just don\u2019t 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\u2019m the one who always seem to have to make all the sacrifices in life for the sake my family.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In another episode of overlooked dad things, I\u2019ve 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 … Continue reading The joy-not of driving the third car<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[51,193,45,83,52,49],"class_list":["post-50570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-cars","tag-dad","tag-fail","tag-observations","tag-owned","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50572,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50570\/revisions\/50572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}