About Cars

"So what are the good cars these days?" I asked the auto shop driver.

He looked at me carefully.

"The Golf is getting expensive to fix," I added.

The driver is also a mechanic. He is either at the bottom of the pecking order or the only one who will drive the courtesy minivan (the one with the child seats tucked in the bench seats) that ferries carless folks either back home or to the nearest metro station. I think the courtesy Cadillac Escalade has a different driver.

This driver has been ferrying us for more than three years. I can understand his accented English, he is from Bolivia, much better now. Both of us remember the time Monkey2 screamed the entire 2 miles from shop to home in the infant carrier car seat; he was quite amazed that she did not, as his children and now grandchildren, calm down as the vehicle accelerated. I also remember that he noticed the first time Monkey2 did not scream, when she was a bit older. Today he noticed I was missing Monkey1, and he rightly guessed "Kindergarten."

"For you, and the babies," (he always refers to the Monkeys as babies, to their mystification) "Nissan. Quest. Or Sentra." He went on to describe the mileage he's seen on these vehicles and the sort of maintenance required: "oil changes, tires, that's it. Easy. Good cars."

Amused, I mentioned that last summer we had rented a Nissan Armada while on vacation.

"Big? No, no, too much gas."

Well, also clumsy. My husband said it was like driving a mountain. The only part he liked about the vehicle was the back-up camera. I liked the part where I hopped out and then made him back out of the parking garage.

I promised to take a good look at the Nissan. Meanwhile, the Golf was in the shop; the car alarm had suddenly, randomly, taken to going off and then silencing itself after about a minute. During the day this was confounding enough, but when it happened at 2 a.m. in our driveway, I had to get it checked. Of course no one could figure out what the problem was, so at over 100,000 miles, this car is just developing the personality quirks of age.