My car has been sucking the money out of me

but he's worth it!

Pedro is a good little car - he's very reliable, and has served me well since the summer of 2003. For some reason age 6 has been a tough year for him, though. We hit the 50,000-mile mark and his health declined... I suppose it's middle-age. First, I was warned that he was going to need new tires before snow season - fair enough. But then his air conditioning system crashed hard in August right at the same time the insurance bill was due, and I was warned that his battery wasn't going to do so well in for start-ups in the cold. I feel like there were other things, too, but any way you look at it, this is more maintenance all at once than ever before.

So today he got "new running shoes" as Andrew says, and he's feeling so young and sprightly, it's just awesome. What a difference new tires can make!

I also got his oil changed, and here's the point of the story. He was wayyy overdue - I was approaching the 6,000-mile mark, which is not okay, and I was feeling very worried for his health and well-being. So I get to my favorite oil-changing place, and they not only remark on how good his oil is for being so far over, they also compliment his beautiful transmission fluid, which they've done for the past three times now.

It's the lamest, lamest, lamest thing ever - but every time the mechanically-minded car-fixers compliment my car, I swell with pride! As if Pedro were actually my child. I don't even know what it means to have beautiful transmission fluid, but daggone it, he's got it!

It's so funny, because when I first got the car, I was not particularly fond of it. I didn't really have a choice in the car I got, and I didn't like the color, and I had really really really wanted a Cabrio. Pedro just wasn't good enough. But we spent a long trip to Myrtle Beach alone together that summer, and on the drive back I decided I really needed to bond with him more if he was going to be my car for years to come. There were lots of billboards along the highway that said something like "Eat at Pedro's!" and it struck me that Pedro would be a fantastic name for my car. Ergo, Pedro (the Mexican-American Ford Escort... just thought I'd give him a little culture) was born, and we've treated each other pretty well ever since.

I know... naming the non-living is ridiculous. But it gives the car a bit of imagined personality, and just generally makes things more fun. I think it's pretty cool that my friends and family also know my car as Pedro and refer to him as such. Maybe it also makes me want to care for the car a little more - a sort of caretaker instinct.

I read a book in which the main character's sister named her kitchen appliances - refrigerator, oven, microwave, everything - so at least I'm not that bad.

Pedro hit the 70,000-mile mark on the way home this weekend, and I realize his time with me is approaching the end. Which I guess is the biggest ridiculousness factor of humanizing the non-human... when I trade him in for something younger and fresher, I will feel the loss of "someone" in my life more than "something."