Not E for Everyone

I know what my dad is getting for Christmas!

Nissan 2.0

I have been driving a 1992 Nissan Stanza for the past 6 months (in the foreground above). To put that into perspective, I was in 8th grade in 1992. After losing my job, and then getting a new one in Lincoln, we needed a car I could bring up here to use to get to and from work. And we wanted to pay cash for it. And I'd been out of work for 10 weeks. Thus, the 1992 Nissan Stanza.

Our parameters when looking for this car were that it had to have four wheels, four doors, and air-conditioning (it was the end of May). While it did satisfy each of these criteria, it failed many others. For instance (be prepared for a run on sentence…), the driver's door window wouldn't close all of the way and could only be opened to about 4" of clearance, the radio didn't work, the sunroof leaked, none of the interior lights worked, it emitted a terrible "rubbing" noise from the front left tire, it had those annoying automatic seatbelts that were en vogue in the early Nineties, only three of the tires matched¹, and the brakes would only stop one wheel (and even that is being generous). That last point was the one that put us over the edge. Specifically, the fender-bender I got in a week and a half ago when a Subaru stopped suddenly in front of me and I couldn't stop because only one screeching tire was available to try and slow my vehicle down before impact, put us over the edge. Nobody was hurt, except our budget.

We ended up getting a great deal on another Nissan, but this time it's a 2002 Sentra. To put *that* into perspective, I got married and graduated from college in 2002! It is the GXE edition with a 5 speed manual transmission and just 30,000 miles on it (and four working brakes). It is the car in the background of the picture above, or you can see a better picture of it here.

As happy as I am to have a safer, more reliable car, I couldn't help but think about how contentment is a moving target that can be difficult to hit. A week ago, I was wishing for a car that you couldn't hear coming from four blocks away and that would stop when I told it to. Yet, as I got out of my car in the parking lot of my office this morning, I caught myself wishing that I had one of those key fob remotes that locks and unlocks the doors so I wouldn't have to use the key. It was easy for me to look down my nose at kids in Illinois who couldn't stand to be without thier XBox and DVD's because of a blizzard, but here I was complaining to myself that my car didn't have keyless entry. I've found lately that one of the best ways to uncover sins in my own life is to examine the things I look down on other people for doing and then to look for those flaws in my own life. Now at least I can have those thoughts in the quiet stillness of my new car, which I am very thankful for.