Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

I recently diagnosed myself with Automotus Anthropomorphus Syndrome. It was the cause of my mild anxiety when I was getting rid of my old car and getting a new one. Basically the root cause of this syndrome is when someone becomes excessive attached to a car and values it like they would a person or, in the more severe cases of the syndrome, a member of the family.

Also, keep in mind that the similarly named Automotus Polymorphus Syndrome is completely unrelated. That’s what Transformers have. :-)

As an aside, you may notice that I changed the post category “Philosophy” to “Pseudo-Intellectual”, as it’s much more descriptive of my writing on things of this nature. Besides, calling it “Philosophy” was unintentionally pompous, it’s not like I need to act smart and superior to get a research grant or something. :-)

So anyway, back the subject at hand. Take my recently replaced car, the 1992 Honda Accord. It was built around Oct 1991, so I was 10 years old at the time. My family bought it around 1994 and it was our family car. I learned to drive on it. It was there on all those roadtrips around Colorado when we were growing up, when I went to college, when I met Crissy, fell in love with Crissy, graduated college, got my first job, severely injured my back, proposed, got married, quit my first job, and started my second job. That’s fairly impressive so it was understandably hard to see it go. Especially when you consider it’s been a loyal and dependable friend. No major repairs, no getting stranded anywhere, no problems in Colorado snow, just solid performance in getting from point A to point B every time.

Oddly this car seems to have that effect on other people. When my parents bought this car, the previous owner made them promise twice to keep good care of it and he was very hesitant in turning over the keys. And he had to sell, since he was leaving the country the next day.

And as testament to how long this car has been with me: when I was cleaning my stuff out of the car, in the magazine pocket by the back seats, I found a Reader’s Digest from April 1994. It’s definitely an artifact from one of the many road trips we took growing up during which Mom would read us the good jokes and test our Word Power.

Crissy suggested that we throw a goodbye party for the car. While it would have been a fun and unique theme party to throw, I told her that she was acting as an enabler of my condition and should know better. :-)