asshole with too much time on his hands. I mean, I didn’t really think it was a bomb, but you never know with these things, and when I turned the key in the ignition, my ass puckered until it became clear that I wasn’t going to be blown into tiny bits, at least not this time around. I told Fred about it (he’s responsible for dealing with car shit because I have no desire to) and he came out and looked at it and said – this is a direct quote – “Huh.” “What do you think it might be?” I asked. I grew up with a father who did 99.98% of our car repairs himself, so I always assume men know more about what might be going on with my car than I do. I’ve actually considered taking an adult education class so that I can be more educated when car issues come up, but usually before I can complete the thought “I should take that adult education class about doing small repairs to your car”, I’m face-down in a puddle of drool. Let’s just say the idea doesn’t much interest me. So Fred said “I don’t know. Why don’t you take it to Firestone tomorrow and see if they can figure it out?” “Pffft,” I said. “I don’t do that. YOU take it to Firestone tomorrow.” And he gave me the “My god in heaven, I am married to the most annoying woman on the face of this planet” look and snapped “Yeah, whatever” or something similar and went back inside. A few days passed and then one day after I left the grocery store and was driving home, I thought to myself “Self, this Jeep is not driving the way it should be. Why am I feeling that… drag?” But it was a false alarm, because I was accidentally driving around in second gear, and when I put the gearshift in Drive, all was back to normal. (I never claimed not to be a dumbass) Then a few more days passed and the spud and I were going shopping, and I started the car and the “coolant low” light came on, and I went into the garage to see if we had any coolant. We did, and I went inside to ask Fred where I was supposed to put the coolant and he all but drew me a diagram, telling me that the place to put it was in the front, center. I went back out, coolant in hand (in bottle in hand, even) and looked carefully at the front, center part of the engine and couldn’t find anything that indicated I should pour coolant in it, so I looked in places other than front, center and finally located a cap saying “engine coolant” in the left back corner of the engine. I debated whether this could possibly be the wrong place to pour the engine coolant, and decided there was no way, and I dumped all that was in the bottle into the “engine coolant” tank and when I started the car, there was no more indication that the coolant level was low. Three days later, the coolant level was low again. And I know nothing about cars, but I thought that possibly it wasn’t a good idea to drive around with a low level of coolant, and since I had to go to the grocery store anyway, I made a mental note to look for coolant. Only there was no bottle of just plain coolant at the grocery store. Instead, there was a bottle of coolant/ antifreeze, and I stood over said bottle for a good five minutes having an inner debate with myself. “I don’t want antifreeze,” I told myself. “I want COOLANT.” “This IS coolant,” I responded. “Coolant AND antifreeze.” “But… can I pour it in the “engine coolant” tank if it has antifreeze in it?” I said. That was such an idiotic question that I did not deign to answer myself. So I bought the antifreeze/ coolant and took it home, and then to be sure I could put it in the “engine coolant” tank (shaddup) I called Fred, who said (surprisingly enough) that I could. So I waited a few hours for the engine to cool down and when I was leaving the house to do some errands, I dumped about half the bottle into the coolant tank, and all was fine. Saturday morning, early, Fred took the Jeep over to the nearby oil change place where he knows the manager and feels somewhat certain he won’t get too fucked over. The guy took a look at the car and said “It’s the radiator.” Fred said, “Y’all replaced the radiator a year ago. Is it still under warranty?” And the guy said “I don’t know. Let me go look it up.” Well, long story short (way, WAY too late for that, I know), during the accident Fred was in two years ago, wherein an old lady slammed into him, the something got shoved back against the something and something somewhere cracked, and no one ever noticed it until now, and that’s why the engine is leaking coolant. Also, I way overfilled the engine coolant tank, and all the oil change guys stood around and laughed at Fred until he said “Yeah, my wife did that”, and then they all laughed at me, who was sound asleep in bed at the time. Bastards. So we’re leaving the cracked what-the-fuck-ever the way it is for now, because it would cost an arm and a leg to repair. This fucking Jeep has never given us anything but trouble. Even better, this morning on my way to the pet store, I discovered that the roof of the Jeep, near the inside rearview mirror, is leaking. One of these days I’m going to be driving along and the engine is just going to drop right the fuck out of the Jeep and the roof will fly off, and I’ll have to cut a hole in the floor and run along like Fred Flintstone.
