And so it goes

I got a call on Wednesday and I wonder how I came off to the person on the other end of the line. I had my car towed to a local repair shop that does adjustment work for my insurance company and the call related to that. I suppose some background info is in order. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

I rarely drive my car, but I do occasionally and sometimes I just start it and let it run for a while. This one time I went out and discovered that it was wet inside – as in the seats were wet, there was a puddle on the floor in the back, the condensation had made the mirror fall off of the windshield and the interior had acquired a rather extensive coating of mold.

There were no open or broken windows, but ever since my car was hit the trunk has leaked a little. Apparently that leak got a bit worse and all the rain we’ve had did some damage. I called my insurance company to see if they covered this sort of thing, they do, so off my car went to the shop to be examined.

I won’t be getting it back. An insurance rep called to tell me that my car was totaled because there was just no way to repair all the water damage. I think I said something like “Oh.” What I was thinking was “Oh shit.” I was a little addled because I had never gone through this before, I wasn’t really fully awake, I was looking around for a pencil and paper, and the amount the guy said they were going to give me was considerably more than I expected. It isn’t even enough for a down payment on a new car, which I can’t afford anyway, but it’s more than I expected considering the age and mileage. Overall the car was in good shape, but there is all that water and mold. So I was somewhat stunned.

I may have sounded like I thought it was, if not great, at least OK that I was going to get that money.

But it’s not OK. I loved that car. It wasn’t fancy but it handled well, it had held up great and I had spent a lot of time commuting in it. It was comfortable and dependable and I suspect that were it not for being hit I could have kept it for another 10 years. It only had 150k miles on it.

I couldn’t afford the upkeep on it. I couldn’t even afford the deductible just to get it fixed. But I wanted my car back. I fully expected it to be back sometime next week after a thorough cleaning and maybe having the trunk sprayed with some sort of heavy duty sealant. There was little of luxury about it, but it was my car.

It’s nice to get something for it but I’d rather have the car. Sure, we still have a car and since we aren’t both commuting in different directions we don’t need two cars anymore, but this was my car. Now that I think about it it’s been more than thirty years since I haven’t had a car of my own. I’ll probably save money, and there are certainly things much worse than not having a second car that didn’t get used much.

This is by far not the worst problem to have. It isn’t even close to being my worst problem, but the car came in handy at times and it was nice as a backup.

Besides, like I said, it was my car.

It may be silly, but I’ll miss it.