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Feb. 6th, 2019 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evening_tsarGoing to the doctor's and going to the mechanic's share more than a few similarities. In both cases I'm going in with a mysterious and possibly frightening problem which I don't understand, in hopes that the magicians on the other end will be able to fix it. Both visits require a great deal of faith that these magicians know what they're talking about, and will deal with me honestly.
When you spend some two hours or more a day in your car, there's no question it's an extension of the body. It's a weird kind of bio-mechanical merge. . . You can feel when things are off. When there's an uncharacteristic rattle, when there's an atypical vibration in the gearshift, when there's just a bit too much resistance in the break pedal or when there's some barely perceptible agonized squeak creeping up from underneath. When the rhythm is off, when all is not right. A lot like your health, you can tell by instinct. That, or the little light on your dash.
Whatever the doctor or the mechanic say to me, I have to take on faith; I myself have no way of verifying what they say, save to consult other shamans whom I also have to take on faith. Whatever they do or don't do is only so much black magic to me. A key difference is that while doctors tend to shrug at me and go "and. .?", mechanics do tend to actually fix the problem, albeit for a bucket of money.
Or they say they've solved the problem . . . For all I know there never was one. Even if the little light on the dash went off. (It must be said, the new pads certainly look better than the old ones, which certainly looked rusted out. . .)
Ignorance is very much weakness in these cases, and at such times I really wish I knew more about cars - or rather, that I cared more, for the really is no reason I can't know more other than I can't bring myself to care. Even when buckets of money are potentially at stake. Though it be one of our society's pillars of traditional masculinity (the other beings sports), I have never been able to muster up even rudimentary enthusiasm for combustion engines. I can only just slog through the owner's manual enough to program the radio. Knowledge would be power, I know! But I wouldn't remember a thing. The nice man explained to me in great detail what was going on and what needed to be done and I forgot every word not thirty seconds later. That sort of useful knowledge just doesn't stay in my brain. Such is my curse.
There can be little doubt now that I've spent more repairing the car than purchasing it. My rational angel may protest that this is a rather stupid state of affairs, but in a pinch, I found I couldn't bear to part with that soon-to-be rust bucket. I could justify this with a very justifiable reluctance to go car shopping (especially in the winter). Car-shopping is about as disruptive to one's life as apartment hunting, every bit as fun and even more risky - I can at least recognize a leaky pipe or a cockroach when I see one, but what lies beneath the hood . . .
If visiting the mechanic is akin to visiting a doctor, then shopping for vehicles is like high stakes gambling. You could get lucky. Or not. You must take the word of people who have a vested interest in selling you something. In our vernacular "used car-salesman" is practically synonymous (rightly or wrongly) with "con-man". I am ill-equipped to take on such men in the best of times, and the added urgency of not disrupting my commuter's work-week would do my head in.
So I may have semi-understandable reasons, but they feel more like excuses. Fact is, when one forms a bio-mechanical hybrid with a vehicle, one feels damned reluctant to let it go. It's never easy to replace a tailor-made environment with a cold, unfamiliar, alien one.
And don't I wish my carcass had a dashboard light which would light up and tell me exactly what was wrong, and that I could consult a mechanic instead of a doctor, who could actually do something about it.
When you spend some two hours or more a day in your car, there's no question it's an extension of the body. It's a weird kind of bio-mechanical merge. . . You can feel when things are off. When there's an uncharacteristic rattle, when there's an atypical vibration in the gearshift, when there's just a bit too much resistance in the break pedal or when there's some barely perceptible agonized squeak creeping up from underneath. When the rhythm is off, when all is not right. A lot like your health, you can tell by instinct. That, or the little light on your dash.
Whatever the doctor or the mechanic say to me, I have to take on faith; I myself have no way of verifying what they say, save to consult other shamans whom I also have to take on faith. Whatever they do or don't do is only so much black magic to me. A key difference is that while doctors tend to shrug at me and go "and. .?", mechanics do tend to actually fix the problem, albeit for a bucket of money.
Or they say they've solved the problem . . . For all I know there never was one. Even if the little light on the dash went off. (It must be said, the new pads certainly look better than the old ones, which certainly looked rusted out. . .)
Ignorance is very much weakness in these cases, and at such times I really wish I knew more about cars - or rather, that I cared more, for the really is no reason I can't know more other than I can't bring myself to care. Even when buckets of money are potentially at stake. Though it be one of our society's pillars of traditional masculinity (the other beings sports), I have never been able to muster up even rudimentary enthusiasm for combustion engines. I can only just slog through the owner's manual enough to program the radio. Knowledge would be power, I know! But I wouldn't remember a thing. The nice man explained to me in great detail what was going on and what needed to be done and I forgot every word not thirty seconds later. That sort of useful knowledge just doesn't stay in my brain. Such is my curse.
There can be little doubt now that I've spent more repairing the car than purchasing it. My rational angel may protest that this is a rather stupid state of affairs, but in a pinch, I found I couldn't bear to part with that soon-to-be rust bucket. I could justify this with a very justifiable reluctance to go car shopping (especially in the winter). Car-shopping is about as disruptive to one's life as apartment hunting, every bit as fun and even more risky - I can at least recognize a leaky pipe or a cockroach when I see one, but what lies beneath the hood . . .
If visiting the mechanic is akin to visiting a doctor, then shopping for vehicles is like high stakes gambling. You could get lucky. Or not. You must take the word of people who have a vested interest in selling you something. In our vernacular "used car-salesman" is practically synonymous (rightly or wrongly) with "con-man". I am ill-equipped to take on such men in the best of times, and the added urgency of not disrupting my commuter's work-week would do my head in.
So I may have semi-understandable reasons, but they feel more like excuses. Fact is, when one forms a bio-mechanical hybrid with a vehicle, one feels damned reluctant to let it go. It's never easy to replace a tailor-made environment with a cold, unfamiliar, alien one.
And don't I wish my carcass had a dashboard light which would light up and tell me exactly what was wrong, and that I could consult a mechanic instead of a doctor, who could actually do something about it.
