Ailing autos

After 65,000 miles, the car started gently moaning, like a middle-aged ex-boxer forcing himself out of a recliner. After 70,000 miles, it began to whine. At 72,000 miles the noise became so loud it was hard to hear the Scandinavian power metal blasting from my speakers, and at that point I had no choice. It was time to take it to the mechanic.

Mechanics intimidate me. Most of them have never worn tights during a musical production of “Cinderella” (like I once did), they’ve likely not allowed their girlfriend’s buddies to paint their nails in jolly blues and greens (ditto), and I’m guessing a vast majority don’t spend their spare time watching animated Batman movies alone (me again). Maybe I’m stereotyping, but lug nuts and lilting falsettos don’t seem like they mix. Unless there’s a lost Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about replacing a carburetor.

Fear of these manly men complicates an already unpleasant situation. Nobody likes to have their car repaired. You lose time, you lose money, and you lose sanity fretting about the diagnosis; if you’re like me, you hope the ailment isn’t terminal so you can keep speeding in the travel lane and filling your passenger footwell with Burger King wrappers. You can’t do those things without a car.

Waiting for the mechanic’s assessment is eerily like loitering in the hospital to await the results of your Uncle Mortimer’s biopsy. The stakes are lower, but you go through many of the same motions: the hand-wringing, the pacing, the biting of fingernails if that’s your thing. Then the diagnosis comes, and for certain people -- i.e., me -- this can be a tricky situation to navigate.

See, I know nothing about cars. Zilch. I know they go fast and that the windshield keeps bird poop from smearing my glasses, and that’s about the size of it. A mechanic could easily exploit my ignorance by making up fictitious ailments, like a worn-out vector rod, or a jammed exhaust defibrillator. This is why, when he’s explaining the problem, I always make sure to nod vigorously and keep my arms crossed over my chest; this connotes confidence and understanding. Coincidentally, I also drop my voice about four octaves. This is trick number 476 in my upcoming self-help book, “Faking Manliness.”

My garage always asks my permission before going ahead with any repairs, but really, what choice do I have? Commuting to work on a skateboard? I live in Biddeford and work in Portland. Unless I can find a team of 12 reindeer all jacked up on angel dust to pull my sorry butt along, I’m gonna have to go ahead and have that worn out crapdiddle gasket replaced, thank you very much.

That means getting a bill for service, though, and that’s another area where they could potentially give you the royal driveshaft. Since I don’t know what half these parts are to begin with, it stands to reason that I also have no idea how much they cost. My car’s transmission could be made of solid gold and blood diamonds and cost $6 million for all I know. With the internet, this is probably less of an issue than it used to be; the standard price of an auto part is a click or a swipe away. Regardless, an unscrupulous mechanic could tack some extra dough onto the labor portion of the bill to make up the difference. In some alternate version of reality, perhaps it’s conceivable that it takes a team of 60 people and half a million bucks’ worth of elbow grease to rotate the tires on a Honda Civic. Try me, I’m gullible.

Certain people develop an interest in cars at an early age and know them inside and out by the time they hit puberty. These are your practical-minded people, the folks who can tie complicated knots, and cure earaches with a few drops of honey and a box of matches. I am not one of these people. I learned enough basic life skills to be able to go out in public without alarmed pedestrians calling the police, and then I pretty much called it a day. So yes, like Pauly Shore’s short-lived movie career, automobiles are still a mystery.

Luckily, even a clueless twerp such as myself becomes less clueless and twerp-like as time goes by. The longer you’ve been a car owner, the more you learn about which parts need replacing and when; you absorb this information through an osmosis backed by sheer necessity. Now in my mid-30s, I’ve driven more cars than Dale Earnhardt. Three have been totaled in road-rumbling wrecks (none of them my fault), three have had their engines die while in heavy traffic, and one lost its power steering because a hydraulic pump got sheared off during a blizzard. I don’t drive my cars into old age. I destroy them with a thoroughness most people can only achieve with the hammer of Thor.

That’s Charlie Brown-calibur luck, but with it comes a feeling of being battle-tested and wizened. Just the other week I had my mechanic suss out the source of my Hyundai’s interior whining and discovered it needed a new timing belt. The dealership had estimated the cost to be about a thousand bucks’ more than it actually was; I know this because I shopped around to find the best price. Sounds simple and common-sense, but when you’re in a dark room flailing, you’ll grasp at anything solid to feel less adrift. With the timing belt fiasco, I realized the room isn’t as dark as it used to be. Small rays of understanding are slanting in through the cracks. Only took three-and-a-half decades.

Which means, of course, that my next encounter with the mechanic won’t be quite so intimidating. I’m still dropping my voice, though, just to be careful. If I start emitting a “Cinderella” vibe, it’s pretty much over.