Ten Great Reasons to Hate Me

I've had to come to grips with a couple of things recently. The most painful of which I will not write about, as it is a personal thing involving other members of the family and I don't really feel like dragging it all out. Suffice it to say that it involves acceptance and forgiveness for the sake of others. I guess, if I have to, I can accept that my asshole brother-in-law is an asshole and forgive him for that.*

The other thing, the thing I will write about, is the glazed-over look that people get in their eyes when I talk about my Miata.

The weirdest part came yesterday, when I stopped at a chop shop during one of my periodic countryside drives. I had been looking for a replacement for the center console lid-- this thing that your right elbow rests on while driving (as driver), which, if you don't know the Miata cockpit intimately, could never be adequately described. Suffice it to say that it's a piece of plastic. The piece of plastic in my Miata is covered with a vinyl-coated pad which was installed by the previous owner. The kit-- and more on this to come-- involves a set of adhesive backed velcro strips which apply to the console lid and a matching set on the pad. I'd seen this kind of thing for sale on the internet when I went out looking for a replacement, since the pad on my piece of plastic had a ruptured corner. Nothing serious, just kind of shabby looking.

(Of course, the kit on the internet boasted and Italian leather pad, and the same kind of friction would have resulted in a dignified worn-and-polished patch where the vinyl one boasts a ragged edge and a spectacular view of the cheap fabric binder element.)

The replacement part, new, starts at 70 bucks, before shipping. So that was out. It's a piece of plastic! And, of course, ordering stuff on the internet, there's shipping to consider. Enter the fine folks at Sports Car Salvage on Lucia-Riverbend Road.

Now, first things first: I don't trust car guys. Never have. I've seen too many brag about how hot their ride was, only to produce a smoking, belching, badly tuned beast that only runs because it's basically in the process of digesting it's own engine block. And, too, growing up here, in Charlotte, NC, which more than one wag has parsed Car Lot-- well, hell, need I say more? The two ubiquitous elements of my beloved home town, when I was a growing lad, were used car lots (and their rotten commercials) and televangelists, both of which, due to the lousy nature of the broadcast world in the Seventies, were virtually inescapable.

I trust salvage guys even less, and oh, could I tell you some stories. The salvage guys I've known have had exactly two modes of being: arrogant and pissed off, and always pissed off because they weren't smart enough to justify their arrogance. So I was reticent to drop in at Sports Car Salvage on Lucia-Riverbend Road, in spite of the fact that I'd seen Miatas stationed out front several times in passing. I finally did yesterday, purely on a whim. Here are some fun facts about cars sales guys, and they are all 100 % true.

They are dumb about parking lots. It struck me some years ago that the real reason I hate car lots, especially in the summer time, is that they are great, huge heat sinks. They are all made of vast spans of black asphalt, and in the summertime the asphalt absorbs and radiates the heat back out. Now, the cars are going to be hot inside already, so what would make more sense that parking them out on a huge heat sink? The customers will be uncomfortable and grouchy, so when you start in on your hard-sell or haggle, they're guaranteed to be pissed off and irritable. Genius!

They are dumb about cars. OK, this one isn't 100% true. But any care sales guy will tell you anything about any car he's trying to sell you, which has to mean that car sales guys love sales more than they love cars. And that's dumb.

They don't know dick about driving. Actually, this isn't true about at least one car sales guy I know of, the one who sold my wife her Mini. He drove us out on a country road outside Winston-Salem like a bat out of hell (by way of demonstration, of course), but then the Mini people don't call them "salesmen," they're "Mini Motering Advisors." Normally I don't fall for such semantic horseshit, but in this case I guess I have to make an exceptption.

But I digress: car sales guys are dumb about driving. After all, the way they see cars most of the time is static, still, sitting on the lot. That has to numb your instincts. So the guy selling you this car doesn't have clue one as to how to drive it. Does that make sense?

Boil that all down and it tells you one irrefutable truth: if car guys are dumb, car salvage guys are doubly so. The cars they see, in addition to being static, are hunks of junk. So in addition to being inordinately proud of having two-- two-- Sunbeam Tiger carcasses under his roof, the old guy who ran the shop also made me stand and wait before taking my money-- cash-- for the piece of plastic. ($35, half what it would have cost new, which I guess is fair enough.) Also, the kid who did the actual work-- climbing up into the Miata on the rack and pulling the console lid, ignoring my plea of "What happened to this thing!?!" on observing that although the car displayed almost no exterior damage, the windsheild, interior passenger's side, sported a head shaped indention eigh inches deep-- boasted that he owned a Miata himself, 1990, first generation, but didn't want to talk about it. Which had to mean that he screwed with the thing, so it no longer ran . . . well, like a Miata.

So I won't be going back there. Salvage guys give me the willies. And oh, the storeis I could tell.

But the real reason why we're here today is, of course, reasons you can all commence hating me. I know it's importatnt to you, so, without further ado, here we go.

I don't have to work. Nyah, nyah, nyah-nyah, nyah! And yet, somehow, I do. In addition to writing, I have been studying up on Korean war history, the history of jazz and rock-n-roll, and preparing a road-runner's geography of upper Mecklenburg county.

I own a Miata. Her name is Nomi, bu the way; Japanese for Flea.

And I won't shut up about it. Which is far more to the point. Enough said.

I own a 25 year old Seagull 12 string guitar. And you don't.

I am possessed of an artisitic sensibility that makes me stand in awe of otherwise ordinary phenomena. I can only imagine that would annoy you. It's a big part of the reason I married my wife, and also a the main reason that Doc Nagel is my best friend: they are pre-disposed to put up with my crap.

I drink Dasani bottled water. I take that back. You don't have to hate me for that. I hate myself for that already. But I swear to God, they put something in that water. (Actually, just this past year they finally got around to admitting on the label that they add salt and minerals to the stuff.)

I re-fill the Dasani bottles with tap water and cary them around. But it's not for the reasons you think. I don't have some cloying, overwhelming need for everyonme to think I'm drinking Dasani. DASANI! BEHOLD, I AM A ROCK STAR!!! It's just for convenience; the bottle happens to fit precisely in the gap behind the passenger's seat in my Miata. Did I mention I own a Miata? So that's, what, six reasons? Lesseee . . .

I have special powers over traffic lights. I can make any traffic light turn green by reaching for my Dasani bottle. I'm telling you, they stuff has voodoo!!!

I am bald and I wear a hat. It's not that I wear a hat because I'm bald, to cover it up. I just like wearing a hat, have for years. But I have caused no end of consternation. For whatever reason, I don't look bald, and when I take the hat off . . . Suffice it to say I have caused audible gasps from across the room, on occasion from entire crowds. It's just not nice of me.

I wear a beard. I never really got why, but this has occasionally been a matter of great dissapointment, especially when I meet people who thought they liked me but didn't know I wear a beard. (And it's not a Goatee, it's a Romanov.) (So what do I need, one more?)

I am obbsessive about wearing Hawaiian shirts. They're almost all blue, and none of them are gaudy, but still, I wear them all the damned time. Except in winter, when I switch to flannels.

So how's that? Enough? I hope so. Other than those, I have no flaws at all, none. Zip, zilch, zero. OK; I'm gonna go shower, get dressed, and stand under the sword of Damocles for the rest of the day.

*Note I didn't say which one. Clever, eh? This way they call allllllll get pissed off at me. Not that any of them read my blog anyways.