Tuesday, March 20, 2018

There is nothing funny about a car show and yet

I can't stop laughing.

Maybe it's because I didn't really want to go to this car show, but now that I am here, I am enjoying myself, inspecting every car, outside and in, the tires, the backs of mirrors, the dashboards, the leather seats, and the parts of cars I don't know the names of

the grill? the rim?

Whatever. I am not really interested in parts of cars. Or, to be honest, in cars. I am here, at this car show, with my husband, a man who is interested in cars.

He may be annoyed with me for telling you this, but for the past several years, he has been making plans to buy his dream car (as soon as we pay the last of our daughter's college tuition). When I say making plans, I mean he has created an excel spreadsheet, a detailed analysis of potential dream cars with their various attributes -- something something about the power of the engine? and...

I can't remember the other attributes,

although I should, because he's shown the excel spreadsheet to me. Multiple times. Last I've heard, he's narrowed it down to one dream car. I'm embarrassed to admit that I do not know what this car is. I am not a person who likes cars.

I am not a person who sees cars.

Okay, I see cars. If they are big or small and what color they are, if they have heated seats (I like those) and if they are reliable. But that's the extent of it.

Side note: when I was in college, a boy I didn't know well (and who obviously did not know me well) borrowed a Porsche to take me out on a date.

The gesture, needless to say, did not impress me, but I tried to act impressed, which was difficult because I didn't know what a Porsche was or why it should impress me. Also, I felt bad for the boy because he was clearly anxious driving this borrowed car, and the date went from bad to worse, when the boy got us lost on the way to the restaurant where he had made dinner reservations, and he was freaking out about losing our table, and I suggested he turn into a gas station and ask for directions, and he did, and then when he was pulling out of the gas station, he hit another car, and the back end of the Porsche fell off.

My husband, thank God, is not buying a Porsche.

We do, however, look at Porsches (Porsch-i?) at this car show. The outsides. The insides. The tires. The backs of the mirrors.

Did I mention that we are doing a scavenger hunt? When we walked into the enormous exhibit hall where they are holding this car show, the ticket takers gave us a sheet with items to find and if you find them all, you can be entered into a raffle where you might win a car!!

(I'm lying. You might win a large screen TV.)

I don't really care about winning a large screen TV, and I didn't think I would care about this silly scavenger hunt, but two minutes into this snooze-inducing car show, I discover a whatchamacallit on a random car that matches an item on the scavenger hunt sheet, and suddenly, I am obsessed with finding every single item.


I am so obsessed that at one point I wander away from my husband and get lost without even knowing I am lost. Until my husband calls me on my cell phone. And something about him calling me on my cell phone and asking where I am, and me, realizing I have no idea because all of these cars, truthfully, look the same, strikes me as hysterical,

and I can't stop laughing, even as my husband is telling me to stay where I am, and even as I don't stay where I am, because I want to check out the back of one more mirror and scour the rims? of one more tire.

We have to go! because the damn car show is closing! And I am still short two items on my scavenger sheet! But I spy a little boy scribbling on his own sheet and it turns out we are missing different items and the two of us agree to trade information, which leaves me with one item left.

The ticket takers will only take a totally completed sheet for the raffle to win the TV. So that's a big giant bummer.




Don't worry. I tell my husband. We are coming back here next year.






2 comments:

  1. LOL, I have the same indifference to cars. When I hear alerts on the radio to look for a car from such-and-such model year, I'm like: How do you know what year a car is from? I mean, I know a Model T is older than a Chevy with fins on it, and a station wagon with fake wood on the sides is older than an SUV, but that's about it.
    When friends are going to pick me up and I don't know their car, they'll say it's a such-and-such model, and I'll say, "Just tell me what color it is." Because that's the only thing I can reliably identify.
    I ride public transit. :-)

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    1. I hear you. I have a hard time finding my own car in parking lots. I have stood before with my key fob pointing at a similar looking car and wondered why the door wasn't unlocking.

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