The Perils Of Convenience, or The Incredible Drowning Car

(Since I started this thing, I guess I'll just keep writing. Read on, whoever you are... we'll see if I have anything else interesting to say!)

Contrary to the usual run of things these days, I was in my late twenties before I had ever owned a car. I'd had a driver's license since high school, but was simply never bitten by the bug, the gotta-have-my-wheels bug. A bookish teenager without any social life to speak of, I was far more interested in telescopes, rocks, Bach, jazz, science fiction and Shakespeare than I was in parties, clubs, or hanging out. My city had a good public transportation system, and my idea of a fun afternoon was hopping a bus to the library, or perhaps to the mall to browse through the bookshops, lust over expensive optical equipment I couldn't afford, and eventually ride home happily clutching a new quartz-crystal geode or one of those wonderful heavy-paged turtleback Audubon field guides. It never occurred to me that I "needed" a car.

In my mid-twenties, I worked in a retail store about forty minutes' walk from my home address. I rode the bus on weekdays, and walked when the buses weren't running. There were even a couple of Sundays when I cheerfully slogged there and back through knee-deep snow, arriving wet and cold but in good spirits. I was chubby but energetic; I sweated a lot and I wouldn't win any speed medals, but I preferred to get around on my own; I liked the sense of independence. I did sometimes accept a ride when I was tired, or running late, or had somewhere else I needed to get to quickly; in later years I discovered taxis and occasionally took a cab. But I never really felt underprivileged or deprived by my carless condition; in fact, I never really thought about it much at all. This was my normality; I had somehow settled comfortably into a way of life that most of the people around me found unthinkable. (A new roommate who worked the same shift in the same store once marveled, when I entered: "I left you at home an hour and a half ago, with no visible means of transportation, and here you are!" My response: a bewildered, "Uh, yeah...?")

It was several years later that I finally joined the ranks of car owners, and it happened only through the coincidence of perfect timing and the generosity of a family friend. Certainly, owning a vehicle opened new options for me. Over the following decade, a short succession of used cars - none too expensive, and replaced only at breakdown - gradually taught me that, yes, I could consider attending a class out of town if I wanted to, or an event in another state; I could visit a friend in another city, or a shop that lay beyond the purviews of public transportation. Cool.

But at the same time as such adventures were becoming possible, owning a car was turning into an everyday "necessity" for me. As time went on, I rarely used the gift to its full potential, to explore a wider world; with a few notable exceptions, I remained mostly within a familiar small circle in terms of both geography and activity. That powerful machine became merely a way to get from any given Point A to any given Point B with the least possible amount of time and (especially) effort, without those Point A's and Point B's actually becoming more interesting, challenging, or advantageous to my growth. Why cross that big parking lot on foot if with a few rounds of circling you can cadge a closer spot? Why walk to the corner store if you can drive? Even just going out "for a change of scenery" now meant getting behind the wheel - but the landscape might as well have been a movie background rolling past, a visual shift between scenes, because the trip itself was always the same - for it is the driver's sad fate that no matter what kind of space the car is in, you're still in the car. (It reminds me of a line from one of Robin McKinley's heroines, explaining why she goes about barefoot: "I like to know where I'm walking. In shoes I'm always walking on shoes.")

And every so often, I'd stop and think... it really wasn't so bad hopping buses. Untethered, with merely a few familiar stops as landmarks, no need to remember where I parked or return to where I started, unencumbered by anything I couldn't carry in a backpack - not to mention unencumbered by maintenance schedules, insurance policies, auto loan payments, and that chronic low background noise that softly but constantly whispers, What if it breaks down? I actually thought, on more than one occasion, that I might do better to simply bail out and hand the car back to the dealership.

I didn't, of course. That would not have been a sensible - or even plausible - thing to do, by the standards of the culture in which I was raised. To give up both property and privilege, on a whim? To waste what I'd already spent in payments? To give up midnight runs to the drugstore for chocolate and cold medicine? To force my lazy body into movement again? To deny what is taken for granted among the vast majority of my acquaintance - that it is necessary to have a car, and normal to want one?

Hmph.

Why all this pondering and reminiscing? Because earlier this month, my car and I got caught in a flash flood at the bottom of a rainy road. It was one of the wildest things I've experienced; suddenly we were splashing through more water than I'd ever imagined that section of road could hold, and I couldn't steer to turn aside. I managed make it partway onto the curb, but my motor had cut out and that was the end; I scrambled out of the car through the passenger-side as water rose up through the driver-side floor, and stood in the downpour laughing as I watched the teetering vehicle, one front wheel on the curb, bobbing gently in the waves. Incredible.

And that was that. Water in the engine, water in the computer, and a verdict of "totaled" from my insurance company has left me currently carless for the first time in a decade. And quite comfortable with that situation, thank you very much.

On previous occasions when an old, paid-for car finally broke down for good, I was a commuter, working a good half-hour's driving distance from home; concerned family members urged me to make an immediate grab at the first decent-seeming car I could afford - "afford" being, in that state of quiet quasi-panic, a somewhat stretchable term, involving a co-signor, a very long loan period, and monthly payments that my budget wasn't really prepared for. Well, I suppose I did have to do it, practically speaking. Not so, this time: I'm not currently a commuter, the insurance valuation was sufficient to pay off the remaining debt on my auto loan... and I've realized that I have no intention of incurring another one right now if I don't have to. I don't need the stress, I don't need the financial obligation, and - regardless of what anyone else might think - I don't need the car. At least, I don't believe I do. And I'm going to find out.

The old bus routes are still there, changed some but still covering a goodly portion of the city. The fares have increased, but set them against the current price of gas and they really don't seem all that bad. Yesterday I went grocery shopping with a large shoulder bag and a backpack; I huffed and puffed and grunted and groaned a bit, but sometimes that's good for the spirit. Standing outside on a fall day is hardly the worst thing I could be doing with my time - and when fall passes into winter, well, hey, that's what snow boots are for.

I have realized that, for me, this utterly indispensable thing really is utterly... dispensable. I'm making a bet with myself that my quality of life will go up, not down. Any takers?