Vehicularly challenged

Cars are complicated creatures. That’s why I only pop the hood on my truck when my wiper fluid needs to be replenished, because that’s easy to do and the only way I could possibly mess it up is to accidentally pour water into the radiator fluid receptacle adjacent to the wiper fluid tank. Gosh, that’s frustrating.

Having my truck was pretty easy in high school – I had my own personal mechanic at home (I called him “Dad” when he was off the clock and “Hank” while he was working), so all I really had to do was cover gas money and scrape the bird crap off when it got out of hand. I was also in charge of not crashing it. Easy enough.

Then my freshman year of college happened. Since I was leaving my truck with my dad while I was gone, I thought it’d be a good idea to give him the rundown of the vehicle’s status.

“So, yeah. It still works. And it’s got like half a tank.” That should do it, I thought.

“OK,” he replied. “When’s the last time you got an oil change?”

I didn’t quite know how to tell him I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant. After a rather embarrassing exchange, it was discovered that I’d driven nearly 8,000 miles without changing – or checking – my oil. My dad asked me if I was insane. I told him I didn’t think so, but from the crazed look in his eye, I immediately realized that wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

The truck survived, but I almost didn’t; for some reason, though, he still let me bring the truck to school for my sophomore year. So, from that point on, I made sure that whenever I came home from school, I took the truck in for an oil change, so he could see that I was doing it. I heard that it was supposed to be taken in every 3,000 miles, so I take it in every 5,000. There are two reasons for that: It’s cheaper, and I always forget.

When I do go, I take my dad with me, mostly because he pays (bless him), but also because he saves me from getting ripped off by savvy, cunning JiffyLube employees. I think he’s afraid I’m going to get an oil change mixed up with a transmission replacement, and accidentally spend $3,000. After that 8,000-mile episode, my dad doesn’t have very much faith in me.

The last time I took the ride in for an “oil switch” (the employee got this greedy, conniving gleam in his eye when I called it that), my dad actually let me do some of the talking. After I told the mechanic what I wanted, he started to ask me if I wanted other things, but instead of directly asking, he asked me if I’d been “keeping up with” and “checking on” things.

“Have you touched your fuel injection?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t dare,” I replied, horrified. He then saw what kind of person he was dealing with and didn’t ask any more questions about non-oil change related things after that.
“How long has it been since your last oil change?” I told him: 5,000 miles. He looked like he was about to flay me, but then I think he saw on his computer that the first time I’d brought it in, it had been 8,000 miles. In a pathetic way, I was getting better at this car ownership thing.

But I don’t think I’ll ever be completely self-sufficient. While some men take pride in “seeing what’s under the hood,” I come from a school of thought that says the hood is closed for a reason. And let’s be honest – if I forget to just look at my mileage every week, what are the chances that I’ll understand why I should rotate my tires every so often? Don’t they rotate every time I push the gas pedal?

I plan to continue to wing it in terms of taking care of my car and being a responsible owner. Yes – that may come back to bite me when I need to change a flat in the middle of a godforsaken desert, or figure out what exactly it is that all those tanks and hoses and metallic-looking things under my hood do. But that hasn’t happened yet.
And besides, there’s always Hank.

This is the opinion of José Martinez, a junior theology major from San Diego, Calif Please send comments to jmartinez@theloyolan.com.