Saturday, July 30, 2011

Driving While Stupid

"Just drive the way you normally do for the first 1500 miles and your car will figure out how you drive and adjust itself accordingly," the salesman said when I bought my Toyota Yaris four years ago. It was an odd instruction. How else was I supposed to drive? Was I supposed to drive normally for 1500 miles and then really schiz it up after that?

This was my first automatic car. The shift includes a third gear snugged into the same slot as "drive." And that's what I drove in for the first 1500 miles: third gear. Sure enough, my car figured out something about me that everyone else has known for years. "She's a little slow," my car whispered to the other cars in the parking lot, tapping itself lightly on the head gasket. "Let's keep it good and sludgy so she doesn't hurt herself."

And that's what my car did. It drove sludgy. It drove like a toboggan in cheese. Or a constipated possum. Or a Volvo. Climbing a hill, it had all the enthusiasm of a seven-year-old at bedtime. I kind of related to it in a personal way, but the whole point of driving a car is to get more pep than you'd have on your own. Plus, it was only getting 32 miles per gallon at best, which seemed wrong for a car the size of a postage-stamp dispenser. Once Dave noticed I'd been driving in third, I asked the mechanic if I could get a second chance to instruct my car how I drive. He pondered, squinted, then revved up his brain by snorking snot back into it, wiped his nose on his sleeve and said, "you know, I think it learns how you drive continuously. Just keep driving the way you normally do, only in drive instead of third."

I should have recognized this for the evasion it was. It was classic postal-handbook. When you work for the post office, you get numerous opportunities to placate customers. "Letters never get truly lost," you say. "It's probably gotten stuck behind the flap of another envelope, and it will shake out eventually and get back in the mail stream and we'll have it back to you, right as rain." As a customer-service gambit, this works because you want to believe it. Your customer wants to believe it. And you'll be far away by the time it becomes clear the letter is in postal purgatory, which is right next to unmatched-sock purgatory and the limbo of unrecalled words. We'll never see that little, what is that, little folded-paper thingy with the stamp in the corner--whatever--dammit--again.


My mechanic had no idea how to make my car forget it had ever met me. I may be able to race it to the top of a hill, but it has a way better memory than I do. I continued to drive it new-normally with no change in its attitude. Finally this year I brought it in for maintenance and mentioned the problem to a whole new guy with a whole different brain and he and his brain thought he could help. It worked. After four years, the car is demonstrating something close to moxie, and gets several more miles per gallon. "What did you do?" I asked.

Well! He unplugged the battery, and plugged it back in. Of course.

20 comments:

  1. Jeez! Murr, you really ought to run for (high) office. No! Wait! If you were president you'd have no time to blog and I'd miss some of my best reads.

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  2. If only we could reboot ourselves, no telling how much mpg we could get. As always, chuckley and wonderfully entertaining.

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  3. Ah, my Murr-ning grins with coffee... how you come up with lines like your car "tapping itself lightly on the head gasket" I will never figure out, but I'm sure glad you do!

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  4. " . . . like a toboggan in cheese. Like a constipated possum." Ah, images that will stay with me the rest of my life!

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  5. REBOOT! Fixes damn near everything. So sayeth this completely untrained systems manager.

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  6. Isn't that the classic fix for everything? Soon, all owners manuals for everything will say, under trouble shooting : REBOOT!

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  7. Sorry you've been having all these problems. You should have had a Volvo. Economic. Peppy. But, maybe only in Canada.

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  8. Don't laugh. Rebooting may be necessary. A friend recently bought a new car. This car needs to be driven every few days or the battery will run down because of all the electronics in the car. He bought a trickle charger that he can hook up through the cigarette lighter to keep the battery charged when he is not using the car.

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  9. For some reason, I thought you might have been a zippier driver from the beginning.

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  10. Shows what I know about cars or gears, from the photo, it doesn't seem you had any other proper place for "D"(rive).

    Great ending!

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  11. Does this mean that the Yaris has the kind of shifter where you kick it over to the right, and then have the option of shifting manually? I mean, looks like you're in Drive from the photo....

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  12. A mechanic who knows the first thing to do is turn it off or disconnect and re-connect. Now you can burn rubber.

    I like the new picture with the hair cut.

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  13. That is hilarious! I really think you should be writing a national humor column! In the meantime, I'm voting for you for Best Humor Blog!

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  14. Thanks, Ed. See, I didn't think it was obvious, either. Thanks, TechnoBabe. I miss my braid, but the long hair was a pain in the rear. Unfortunately, I mean that literally. And thanks, Michelle! I think that might make two votes! (Speaking of pains in the rear--that "Best Blog" site takes some diligence to navigate. I certainly appreciate your effort.)

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  15. That is the dopiest shifter I have ever seen. 3D? Seriously? Doesn't everyone drive in 3D? Maybe you need those glasses from the Harry Potter movie.

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  16. The new hair looks fabulous! Your car drove like a "constipated possum..." Your mind is a strange and wondrous place, my friend.

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  17. Hey Murr! Well damn, he rebooted the car. I wonder if that will work with mine? Hmmm. Mind you, I did put olive oil in the reservoir. Hey, it looked the same! Now, whenever I go over 60, the smell makes me hungry. Despair. Indigo

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  18. My pet peeve are people who drive with one foot on the brake and the other on the gas. It also seems to unnerve store owners who occasionally experience customers who drive over the sidewalk and into the front window of their shops.

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  19. I know sales people are! They drive you crazy lol. Coming to your car, it's a nice buy.
    Your Dream Car
    Which car lives upto your dreams?
    http://www.3smartcubes.com/pages/tests/favourite_car/favourite_car_instructions.asp

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  20. Who knew you could hard-boot a car?

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