I spend most of my time and money taking care of others. I make meals, do the laundry, and I keep my slightly boring job so that I have medical and dental coverage for my family. I drive to soccer games and buy the necessities. I spend my money on groceries, the mortgage and the utility bills. If I buy something for myself, which is rare, it’s because I’m expected to look a certain way at work. I can’t remember the last time I spent money on something that was really for myself.
Today I felt that I really, really wanted to do something for myself, and I knew exactly what it was I wanted to do: I wanted to have my car look half decent. I often joke that my car is hubcap-repellent, and despite the “no littering” sign I installed on the dashboard, at the end of the week my car is filled with cleats, used tissues, and food bits. It’s disgusting on the inside, and as for the outside, my stepson summed it up: “It looks cool without hubcaps. It looks like an undercover police car.”
I don’t want my car to look like I’m on a sting. I want my car to look like the other cars in the parking lot. I’m generally not one to compare myself to my neighbours, but when it comes to my car, I’m guilty of a certain kind of vanity: I just want my car to look normal. It’s not new, it’s not nice, but surely it can be clean and ordinary. I work so hard, and spend so much time driving the kids around, that I want my car to be a little less ugly and a little bit cleaner.
So today I left work a bit early, and went to Canadian Tire to buy some new hubcaps. I also treated myself to some new floor mats – 4 for $11.99! I also picked up a snow scraper, because the one I had was so old that last winter the plastic degraded to the point where the entire thing crumbled in my hand. With hubcaps, new mats, and a brush for the soon-to-come snow piled in the trunk, I headed to the car wash.
While I could have – and in retrospect, maybe should have – gone to a do-it-yourself car wash, I decided to go to the local full service place. When handing my car over to the attendant, I joked with him that of course the keys were in the car: the key hasn’t come out of the ignition in two months. That’s when the key got stuck in there, and my options were to leave it there, or pay loads of money to have it wrenched out and the ignition replaced. As I pretty much live paycheque to paycheque, the choice was really made for me. I also thought, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
So I paid my $14.95 for a vehicular beauty treatment, and headed into the lounge where customers wait to have their car pampered. I noticed with delight that the TV in the lounge was playing, with sound, an episode of “The Office.” This is one of my favourite shows, but I rarely get to watch it. What a treat! I sat down and quickly became engrossed in the episode.
I was thoroughly enjoying myself when, about ten minutes later, the attendant came up to me, and interrupted my viewing pleasure: “Uh, we can’t get your car started.” Once at the car, he explained to me that the first time he turned the key in the ignition, the key popped right out. However, when the key was reinserted, the car wouldn’t start. We spent a good fifteen minutes trying my two car keys and jiggling the wheel, while a longer and longer line of cars was growing behind mine. I then realized that I was going to have to have my car towed out of the car wash. The car wasn’t going to start, the situation wasn’t going to get better, and the $100 I had budgeted to make my car look a little bit nicer just multiplied.
I went back in to the lounge and borrowed the phone to call a tow truck, the auto repair shop I usually use, my dad to pick up my son, and my partner to ask if he had any money I could use. The last call was strictly a formality: of course we have no extra money. What’s worse, I did this with an audience of other customers whose cars, driven around mine, were being pampered. The worst, though, was making these calls, with an audience, and feeling that humiliating and inevitable push behind my eyes that means the tears will soon start. I hate that feeling. While I may not be able to control what happens around me, I know that my reactions should be under my control. A few tears escaped, pulling eyeliner and mascara with them down my cheeks. Great: my car has broken down, in a car wash, I have little money to deal with this problem, it’s rainy and dark outside, and now I’m leaking tears in public.
Mercifully, the tow truck came, and seventy dollars later my car and I were at a repair shop, ordering repairs that I don’t know how I will pay for. I walked home, in the rain, in high heels. All this on the one evening that is more or less my evening. It’s the day when I pick up my son, and we head to my parents’ house for dinner. I relish this time with them as it’s easy, fun, and I get to eat a meal I didn’t cook. I have a glass of wine and listen to what my parents are up to. Then I drop my son at soccer practice, and go home; my dad picks him up so that my parents can have my son for a sleepover. It’s his favourite night of the week, and mine.
But tonight my son will dine at my parents’ without me, as they live on the opposite side of town, and I already ask too much of my parents to ask for dinner followed by a ride home. Defeated and sad, once home I went in to my bedroom to change out of my wet clothes, and noticed that our new but very large puppy had clearly gone for a trek in the mud and then got up on my side of the bed. I stripped the sheets, put them in the washing machine, washed my mascara-stained face, grabbed a beer, and declared that 5pm is a perfectly mature time to go to bed on a rainy November Monday that did not go nearly as planned. When I grow up, I hope to become an adult, but for now, I’ll have my own private pity party and pretend that a world of chores and obligations does not exist outside my bedroom door.