New Car Paranoia

My wife has been in New York this week for business. While we miss her terribly, there is one little perk I was left with this week: I got to drive our new Toyota Avalon.

To convince her I could be trusted with her new car was an arduous task. There were training videos, simulators and waivers to sign. Assurances were made and above all the Golden Promise: “I promise to park far away from any other car to prevent door dings.” You simply can’t park next to some guy with a rusting Escort and a bad disposition and trust your door won’t get dented.

Now, with her out of town, and my general fear of all things stove, oven and spatula, there was no way I was going to cook dinner last night. After a lengthy and delicate negotiation with the kids (who knew there was such a difference in the grilled cheese sandwiches at different restaurants), we settled on a nice dinner at T.G.I. Fridays.

I pulled into the parking lot and found the most distant row without any other cars and parked. Our dinner went without incident, but as we trekked back across the windswept parking lot, I saw a few other cars in our row. Fear swept over me momentarily, but as we got closer I realized that both the new Caddilac and the new Corvette had kindly parked with an intervening stall between them and the Avalon. I sighed a breath of relief. Their wives must have had the same Golden Promise.

Best of all, I had started the “new car paranoia” parking row! I love being a trendsetter.

Posted on July 12, 2006 in Marriage and Family, Spectacularity. 2 comments   

2 Comments

  1. Jeremy said:

    First of all there is nothing wrong with rusting Escorts……in fact the more rust the better….gradually the car gets lighter and you get better and better MPG.

    Second parking as far away from all other cars IMO is pretty dumb because generally if you are rolling through a parking lot in your pimped out Escort you are taking it slow and watching out for things when you are in the core part of the parking lot where the bulk of the cars are parked, but once you clear that area you usually are going like a bat of hell and aren’t paying much attention because no one parks out there – you are just asking for a collision.

    July 13th, 2006 at 8:00 am
  2. Dan said:

    I know what you mean! When I bought my first new car: a Neon back in The Days When Being in IT Did Not Suck(TM), I was worried about that too. Then, one day, I came out and found that some jerk plowed into my back bumper and went away. I never got it fixed; it wasn’t that bad, but it did take away any hope I had for having a nice car since there are other people in the world (a problem I haven’t found a solution for yet, but I’m working on it!)

    July 18th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
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