I Want To Cheat On My Car
By Janis Hirsch
I love my car, I really do. But lately, it’s felt so… predictable. So safe and secure which is great but safe and secure isn’t sexy. Yes, there’s enormous comfort in its reliability. It knows all my pre-sets, it doesn’t judge when I run the heat on high with the sunroof open, it doesn’t get turned off when I have to drive home with my jeans unzipped ‘cause I really really really need to pee.
But sometimes, a girl wants to be surprised, you know? My darling little car does every single thing I ask of it and that’s very good, but once in a while, a little “bad” can be even better.
I’m not talking about selling it or trading it in. I take my vows and extended warranty very seriously. Until recently, I was content to look at cars lasciviously from afar. No harm in looking, right? But I’ve got the 35,000 mile itch and I can no longer fight it.
My proposal? An open automotive marriage. Drive other cars for a one-nighter or something longer but always, always come back to my true love.
I suspect I’m not alone in wanting to fool around behind my car’s trunk ; in the U.K. would this be called a Boot Call? Herewith is my legal and honorable solution:
Vehicular Hook-Ups.
Think of it as a time-share except you get to drive different cool cars instead of staying in different creepy condos with questionable bedding.
You’d pay a yearly fee and for that you get to spend weekends with other cars, pending availability. For instance, yesterday I was dazzled by an unbelievably hunky 2012 Ford F650 Extreme Supertruck. It was gigantic, like a fire engine red iceberg idling next to me at the light. Even when I stuck my head out my window l I couldn’t see the top of the cab. When the light changed, I waited for it to pass me. It was so long it was like watching a freight train go by.
Do I want to own a car bigger than my elementary school? Of course not. I don’t want to pay for the gas. I don’t want to have to put on Alpine climbing shoes and belay gloves just to hoist myself in and out. And God knows I don’t want to park it between two Mini Coopers at Whole Foods.
But come on, it would be a blast to tool around in that baby. I’d buy a Christmas tree and throw it in the flat bed, even though it’s not Christmas and I’m a Jew. I’d buy a pallet of potting soil and sacks of manure and everything single thing Ikea has to offer and just toss ‘em in the back. No flattening of seats, no wedging it in on a diagonal from my glove box to out my rear passenger window, no making my passenger take a bus because there’s no room for her AND my new claw-foot bathtub.
Okay, yes, I’m one of those idiots who swerves away from sprinklers when I’m in my Prius but in my badass truck, I’d gladly get wet. Hell, I‘d drive across my neighbor’s front lawn and right through their koi pond without blinking an eye. I probably could climb every mountain and ford every stream in that thing but who has that kind of time?
And then I’d come home to my own true car unable to imagine ever leaving it again.
But I know my appetites. A week later, maybe two and I’d be sneaking off for a weekend in one of those adorable little teeny cars like a Fiat 500 or a Smart or that three-wheeler from India that’s made entirely of old Zappos.com boxes. I’d drive from mall to mall, parking in spots no other car could even dream of – it would be like wearing skinny jeans without having to suck in my stomach! Even though I don’t have a kid in grade school, I’d get in any number of carpool lanes just to annoy all those little bitty women in their big giant SUVs that they can’t see over.
Think about it the joys of driving around in a car too small to take your mother to the hairdresser in. Think about the freedom of tooling around town in a car that sips no more than a juice box of gas a day. And I guarantee you that my gear-head husband and son would rather walk than borrow my teeny weeny wheels.
And once again, there’d come a time when I’d run home to my Prius who I know would forgive me because that’s the kind of Toyota she is.
The possibilities are endless. How about a Ferrari? Never in a bazillion years (which spell-check wants to make “a Brazilian years,” a term used to define the era when women and men who had no business in thongs roamed the earth) would I buy a Ferrari. Too expensive. Too fast. Too low to the ground, which is why I maintain that if I ever get sentenced to jail, just put me in a sports’ car; it’s a lot cheaper and I can’t get out of that, either.
But tool around town in a 458 Spider? Hell, yes! Sure, I’d come home smelling of that luxurious and-stitched Schedoni leather but it would be worth spending a night or two on the couch just to have gotten that out of my system.
The possibilities are endless: time-share a sanitation truck just to see if you can drive it as slowly as the pros; a time-share lemon just to see if you can make it catch on fire; or my dream, a time-share pink Corvette just so I can understand why anyone other than Barbie loves driving them.
Time-share cars. Because which would you rather do – spend a weekend bopping around in a pimped-out Rolls or spending a weekend in an off-season condo that smells vaguely of Indian food and feet?
I’m just saying.
One Response to “I Want To Cheat On My Car”
Yes, sign me up. I’m getting the 7 year itch with my same age Toyota Rav-4. I’ve almost paid it off, but it couldn’t hurt to put the pedal to the medal in a new Lexus just to zoom onto the 405 once and not be the last car on. I promise I’d give it back, no really…