That’s what I said to my car this afternoon as I turned the key in the ignition, and felt the damp thud of an engine not coming to life. It was one of the angriest moments I’ve ever had with a vehicle, largely because our troubles with this thing have doggedly persisted for such a long time, with such perfectly timed annoyance. It all began when the car’s power locks started engaging themselves without permission; a curious display, minute enough to ignore a few times yet suitably mysterious to eventually drive you insane. We hesitantly ignored this, hoping for some kind of “live and let live” truce with our vehicle: you do whatever freaky thing it is you want to do, just keep working and whatever.
Then it upped the ante, unlocking itself as we walked away, defying us to come back and do something. Even this we were prepared to ignore, so the game went up to the next level: one day, Corelyn turned the key and it just didn’t go. We replaced the battery, shrugging to ourselves and moving on with life when the problem seemed to be solved. But car troubles, in truth, are like the bad guys in horror films: they can take enormous punishment, then still rise back up when you’re not looking. The next time the car wouldn’t start, Cor had to jump it for five minutes to get it rolling.
Finally convicted of the seriousness of the issue, I spent a few hours with the electrical systems of the car, found a 30 amp fuse responsible for the power locks, and yanked it out. My reasoning was this: maybe the locks are engaging constantly when we’re away, and the battery is thusly being sapped. My intervention seemed to remedy the issue, and although it was a mild inconvenience to hand-lock all the doors, it was an armistice we were both prepared to embrace; it’s not like we have money to just toss at stuff like this. But then, I got a voicemail from Corelyn on Friday saying the car had betrayed her again. I was enraged for about ten seconds, before I remembered that this voice mail was out of date, and was actually referencing a failure from two weeks ago. Ah, the sweet, lighter-than-air elation of arriving home to discover my vehicle in perfect working order.
Then two days later, it wouldn’t start.
Have we “solved” the problem, you ask? I must request that you not ask such questions. In the frustrated hours of troubleshooting that myself, my father and Jeff did, we arrived at a bewilderingly simple cure that seemed to remove the symptoms, bringing the car back to life. But by now, I’ve been through so much up-and-down with this beast that all notions of logical causality, all semblences of harmony between cause and effect, are a shattered memory. I’m so bewildered that I’m turning to superstition to ease my mind: maybe if I just don’t say it’s fixed, the stupid thing will be appeased. Sssh, Dear Reader. You’ll jinx it.
As if that wasn’t enough, I got stuck in an elevator today. Let me go on the record with the fact that Wilshire Royale has never adequately addressed the dubious safety of their elevators. They rumble very uncomfortably, they break down, the doors wait five agonizing seconds before releasing you from their grip, these myriad problems have never been remedied. Today, as I rode this monstrous thing one last time, the damned thing just broke down in between the second and third floors. I could hear doors above and beneath me, gasping for air and frantically trying to receive me, but I was bound in a netherworld. After about a minute of incredible stillness, I rang the “alarm.” I cannot even begin to tell you how worthless this thing is, it just sounds off a fancy bell. After another minute, I used the emergency phone, and that got me some results. I was out of there within another couple of minutes, all my limbs in place. On the way down (I used the stairs), I stopped off at the office to let them know I thought this was unacceptable. They told me they were sympathetic, but that replacing the thing was “expensive.” I politely invited them to cry me a river, it’s not like safe transport to your room on the 10th floor is an optional thing. The poor people still living there are now going to have to deal with this.
Personally, I intend to give someone a call and let them know about this. I know it’s not technically my problem, but their lives are just as valuable as mine, and even if the elevator breaking down is mostly harmless, I don’t think anyone should kid around with that kind of thing. Elevators need to be pristine, perfect and working without hiccups all the time, because the alternative is they kill you.
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