Day 648, April 11, 2022

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Sometimes the universe sends a little twist that makes one question humanity in a way that subsequently makes every individual suspect. One seemingly kind mechanic who offers to do a favor, like fasten down a loose heat shield, but then tries to say the brakes need to be redone and the tires need to be replaced in a few months, when I know full well that I had the brakes done in December… and the tires, I’m not sure, but they don’t seem old enough for a change. So I drive off without commitment, the heat shield still rattling, and have to spend another half day at a different mechanic waiting to get my brakes checked and confirmed as ok, and the tires confirmed as ok, and heat shield just removed… and then my left front tire starts leaking air. A third mechanic shows how the tread is worn thin on the inside edge. There’s nothing to be done he says, and wants to sell me a set of tires I’ve never heard of before. 

It is exhausting going through the world feeling like everyone is trying to hustle you. It makes one angrier.  It makes one tired. 

A few years ago, while traveling in Korea, I had the thought, everyone in this country is hustling to get by. Everyone is doing all they can to make ends meet, and I think that is mostly understood. There are no hard feelings. Sometimes you get a bargain, and sometimes you pay too much. But mostly, you pay too much, and that’s ok if you don’t know better.

There was a time that I had a mechanic I trusted, for no reason other than I decided I would trust him, and for years, until he retired and moved away, I took my car to his little shop. I’ve stayed with the same dentist, not because he is gentle with my teeth, he isn’t, but he remembers where I work, I know his challenges with his son, and I like his accent. 

A few years ago I ran across my trusted mechanic from before the trusted mechanic who retired. The garage for the previous trusted mechanic was too far for me to travel to easily, so I had stopped being a customer ten, maybe fifteen years ago. He saw me in the hallway, pointed at my chest and said, “Tan Nissan Maxima.” 

I was stunned. That was a 1988 Nissan Maxima passed down from my parents. The very last time I took it to him, he explained, that the gas smell I was smelling was gas. There was a leak in the gas tank and it was dripping onto the muffler. If I didn’t give up the car or fix it, I was going to die. He didn’t say that last part, but it was clearly inferred. The car was towed away from the garage to the junkyard for some sad sum of $50 or something like that. 

It feels so much nicer to trust people. I’ve had a few minor surgeries. It was a relief to give myself over to the care of others and trust that they knew best. It is that feeling when a nurse places a warm blanket over your body and tucks it in close, almost like swaddling a baby, and you are genuinely thankful. That gratitude extends to everyone in the anesthesia addled circle of existence. Everyone is good and kind and talented and has the potential to place a warm blanket on your body. 

I endeavor to find the people I trust. Tomorrow, I take my car to yet another tire store and I think I will give myself over to them, the way I did to to the surgeon who told me I needed to have throat surgery. Some days I just needed to drive to Boston, it was something that was necessary and important. Tomorrow, I will listen to the mechanic and his or her prognosis, his or her plan of remediation, and then I will decide to trust them implicitly. I will purchase two or four new tires and probably have to walk back to work, or maybe wait there and take too long. Or, I will have to come back another day, like when I was scheduled for an MRI and discovered sitting inside a machine for a period of time is one way to slow one’s life down.

Take care and be well,

Leo