Smart Car
by Doug Hawley
9: Auto Talk
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Because everyone else has
had a turn, I’m writing this one. I didn’t
have much interest, but everyone said “Come
on Josie, tell us your story.” I’m only
a couple of years old, so I don’t have as
much experience to draw on as the others do.
At first, I didn’t
know how to write, but Carl shared his app with
me. Carl told me that my inability was nothing to
be ashamed of; most cars don’t know how to
write. I think that Carl has some nasty ideas
about me, but I don’t want to rush into
anything. I’ve never been intimate with
another car, and I’m proud of it. I want to
protect my virtue until I’m sure about
another car, and I know that Carl has been with
other cars and may have some diseases. It’s
even scarier knowing that he has been both male
and female with other cars, even though he always
tries to be macho with me.
My most important
relationship is with my human Sheila. She got me
after she moved back to Oregon. She already had
that stupid, antique car Duke, I mean Deuce. She
had to change Duke’s name to Deuce because
she hooked up again with her old high school love,
also named Duke. There must be something good
about Duke, because she seems to like him a lot,
but I liked her old boyfriend, Shane, who is a
very important person. He’s a city counselor
in our Oregon town Lake Oswego. Not only that,
but he has excellent taste. He is always well
dressed and has wonderful suggestions about how
Sheila should decorate her house and he knows
which clothes would look really good on her.
Better yet, he doesn’t even try to do the
nasty things to her that Duke and some of Sheila’s
former boyfriends have done. I hope that she
comes to her senses about finding a good match.
Sheila should follow Shane’s
advice on how to dress. She goes out in public
with clothes that don’t match and sometimes
even a pair of jeans and an old tee-shirt.
Because I can’t get into her house, I don’t
know, but I imagine that it is filled with
knickknacks and memorabilia without any fine art
at all. When I criticize, she always says “You
dress the way you want, I’ll dress the way I
want.” You would think that she could learn
from my example, I always look my best. There was
one time that we got into a screaming match which
she ended by saying “I could turn you into a
guy.” I was so terrified that I’ve had
to be careful what I say ever since.
There’s another thing
that bothers me about her. She spends a lot of
time driving Deuce and leaving me at home. I
shudder thinking about the trouble she could get
into with her dumb car. If discovered, she would
become a known criminal and her secret identity
as Rogue would be discovered. Worse than that,
with that overpowered, under safe monster, she
could injure herself and others. If my
imagination weren’t bad enough, sometimes
she comes home smiling, telling me about her
latest horror show – going through yellow
lights, speeding and “laying rubber”,
whatever that is.
Does it sound like I’m
jealous of or dislike Deuce? First of all, Deuce
is just a piece of metal. It’s just there.
There isn’t anything to like or dislike
about it. It is true that I don’t like what
Deuce and Sheila do together and I might be just
a smidge jealous of her time with him. One way
that I would just as soon spend less time with
Sheila is when she is out with Duke. Sheila
thought that I should get to know Duke, so I took
them to a movie. That wasn’t so bad, but
afterwards, she had me go to a local make out
spot, Rocky Butte in Northeast Portland. Ew,
gross! I hope that she always takes Deuce or he
takes Carl when they go out in the future. A
really chilling thought is that she or Duke might
suggest double dating with the two of them, Carl
and me.
I don’t mean to
emphasize the negative. Sheila and I have great
times together. She appreciates my suggestions
about where to shop and trips to take. I really
enjoy our trips to George Rogers Park. We can
spend hours just watching the river go by. I don’t
get to into the stores when she shops for clothes,
but she likes to model what she bought for me
after we get home. Sometimes I can be a little
critical of her tastes. Whenever she calls me
Josephine, my full name, I know to back off. One
thing that we never argue about is my cleanliness.
We both enjoy the times that she cleans me inside
and out. She makes sure that she gets every nook
and cranny.
I don’t always hang
out with humans. Every week, our car group,
Feminine All The Time, or FATT, meets at a drive
in theatre. For some reason, Sheila says that
FATT would be a bad acronym for a human group.
They always show a special movie for us, usually
about English women of a certain age, who spend a
lot of time drinking tea and worrying about human
things. We can gossip during the movie without
spoiling it. We like to talk about some of our
favorite model cars and their affairs, such as
the scandalous liaison between a lowly Ford and a
Bentley. We also get to trade stories about our
humans. I don’t get to contribute much
because Sheila and I get along well, but other
cars have some great gruesome stories. Julia was
left for a couple of weeks locked into a garage
and became a playground for raccoons. Even after
she was reupholstered she never felt any pride
again. Her new interior was purple and orange. I
think that her human was crazy. Sandra’s
person jabbers all the time about meaningless
stuff, like how he’s either going to start a
war or go to the moon. The worst story that we
ever heard was about Henrietta being caught in a
landslide and being stuck for a week. Even worse,
her person blamed Henrietta for not getting out
of the way. Some humans are just savages.
Earlier I had some bad
things to say about Carl. I shouldn’t have
been so judgmental and so sure that we would
never get along. After all, he is the one that
taught me to write, and he tells me that he loves
being cleaned by his human, so maybe we are not
that different.
By Josie
The End
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