Life Lessons From My Car

I bought a "new" car a year ago. It's a 2004 Saturn L300 that had 105,000 miles on it when I got it. It has about 118,000 on it now, and the problems it has that were little, easy to fix, and cheap a year ago have now made themselves known as big, expensive, groan inducing problems.

From the first day I owned it, Digger had a slow coolant leak. It was really more of an annoyance than anything, resulting in me adding coolant to it every month or so. We eventually took it to a shop to figure out where the leak was coming from, exactly, and instead they found about $1200 worth of leaks that I couldn't afford to fix. We had them fix the most vital leaks, and continued on our way. I figured that as long as it was running, the leaks couldn't be that big of a deal.

There was a week in which Digger was hit three separate times in parking lots: once scratching the bumper, once knocking the bumper off, and once knocking the passenger side mirror off, and leaving a huge scratch down the side of the car. I fixed the scratches with black nail polish, popped the bumper back on, and I still don't have a passenger side mirror, thanks to the estimate we had saying we'd be out $300.

All of the problems that we had were just annoyances that I could shake off.

Until today.

Last night we drove to my grandparents house and back, a total of about 160 miles. That was apparently all Digger could handle, because this morning he gave up. I was about halfway to work, idling at a stoplight, when all of the sudden my engine started to make a sound like a train whistle, the check engine light popped on and started beeping, and the temperature gauge jumped dangerously close to overheated.

I quickly did the only trick I knew to do: turn the heater on.

The rest of my drive to work was a terror and stress-filled drive through the hills of Branson, praying every time the gauge got close to the horrible red line. It finally hit the red line as I was pulling into the parking lot at work. I called my husband and asked him if he would bring me coolant. He said that he couldn't, and that I should see if the airport had some I could borrow. My response was to then call my Mama and ask her what she would do.

In typical motherly fashion, she and my father drove the hour and a half to the airport to look at my car. I never saw my parents, but I know they were there, and that they added coolant to my car, and made an appointment at a mechanic's for Wednesday.

My car made it home, the whole drive a repeat of the way to work. We think the diagnosis will either be a cracked radiator, or the water pump.

The life lessons Digger taught me today are simple. One, don't let a little problem become a very big problem just because it's inconvenient to fix at the time -- it will only be more inconvenient later. Two, if you have a problem, make sure you make it known how large/small it is, otherwise people will think it's nothing until you explode. Three, Mama will fix everything, and as scary as it is, I will have at least one little booger calling me Mama in four and a half months.

Gulp.