Because a sense of humor is essential

So, I may have mentioned a time or two about my tendency to worry about my health. This, I am sad to say, extends beyond my own health and also includes the health of other, inanimate objects in my life... for instance my car. This past year has been a rough one in the land of vehicular transportation.

About two and a half years ago now, I bought my very first car (with the generous support of my mom, grandfather and summer job savings account). I opted for the ever reliable 2002 Honda Civic 4 door sedan, dark red, and I love her. She is spunky, and great on gas, and in theory, built to last. Despite this however, the past 12 months have not been kind to my baby. She had both front struts replaced, a new CV axle on the right side, her driver's side mirror knocked off (by a friend's, roommate's boyfriend... there is a story there to be sure) and just recently the replacement of four tires. To say that my meager bank account suffered under the strain of so many car repairs is something of an understatement. So when I got in my car one rainy day not so long ago, and began to smell burning rubber, my mind traveled immediately to the possibility of yet another costly repair. To be exact, "Are you f-ing kidding me?!" (or some other, equally frustrated and pissed off phrase) whizzed into my mind and remained there each time I went to get into or out of my car that day.

Toward the end of the day, I called my father, and stood outside my car with the hood open, and inspected belts, areas for potential leaks, smoke emitting, nothing. Of course, all the while I was on the phone my language was uncharacteristically effusive and more in keeping with truckers and local bar goers during a Yankees/Red Soxs game. I was getting myself worked up and more pissed with each thought of "what the f is wrong now".

My father tried to calm me with words of the fatherly sort, "Relax Trina, there's no sense in getting stressed out until you know there's really a problem to worry about." To which I thought to myself, "Yeah, that is what you said right before I had to shell out $700 to get my struts fixed." I may not be a mechanical genius, but I like to think that I am handy enough to know when there is something wrong, and a strong smell of burning rubber never leads to anything good. Self-diagnosis not withstanding however, I had no choice but to continue running my errands and deal with the rubber smell later when the mechanics were open for business.

I mentioned earlier how I first noticed this smell of burning rubber on a particularly rainy day. Being the practical and prepared girl-scout type girl that I am (excepting of course when fashion and looking "cute" take precedence, ie. on dates, before big meetings, and when I am trying to impress people with my fashion savvy), I wear the appropriate footwear in in-climate weather. The rain called for boots, big ones, of the yellow sort. (I can wade through puddles up to my knees when I sport these bad boys.) I should also mention that it was rain in January- which equates to fricken freezing rain so cold it might as well be snow.

The reason I bring up all these seemingly unrelated points about yellow boots, freezing rain and burning rubber you ask? I'm getting there.

So I went into Target, pissed about my car, but still needing to pick up some new hair ties. I patrolled the aisles in search of ouchless elastics. When I finally found them, they were on the bottom shelf, and so I knelt down to reach them. "Hmmm... it smells like burning rubber down here. That's odd." I stood up. "It doesn't smell like that up here." I walked to the toilet paper aisle, and again bent down to pick up some Charmin. "Huh. Burning rubber..... uhhh....no way.... I am not that dense. " So these big yellow boots, yeah definitely made of rubber. And that freezing rain, definitely requiring heat blasting on high. Is anyone following me here? Yes. I was that much of an idiot. I was stressing and bitching, and stressing some more about what was wrong with my car, when in fact, I was just melting my boots with the heat in blowing out of the floor vents making it seem as though burning rubber was blowing in off some soon-to-overheat car part. Brilliant.

Not one to hide these sort of things in shame (obviously) I called my father who had borne the brunt of my ranting, and laughed my way through the explanation of why I knew there was in fact, nothing wrong with my car. Sometimes, all you can do is laugh.