A few weeks ago, I drove to Starbucks because caffeine is a drug and I have a problem. Waiting in line while the person in front of me ordered a "venti decaf soy non-fat milkshake" masquerading as iced coffee, I tried to ignore the fact that I was paying five bucks for a cup of joe. After picking up the caramel macchiato made for “Matte” (yep, that’s how they spelled it), I ran back to my car to avoid both the impending regret from my purchase and the rain that had started to fall. However, as soon as I started the car, I was greeted with an orange outline of an engine next to my speedometer. I must have spent at least a minute just staring at it, already imagining myself pushing my car along the road in the rain.
I finally came to my senses (at least temporarily) and grabbed the owner’s manual from the glove box. Flipping through page after page of features I didn’t even know about, I found the section dedicated to warning lights. All that was next to that familiar orange outline of an engine was “Check Engine light.” While I knew it had something to do with the engine, since most cars these days won’t show you a picture of a tire if you need an oil change, I was hoping it’d be more specific. Then again, that just may be the woeful under appreciation we millennials supposedly have for the technology available to us. Anyway, with little additional information and an overwhelming sense of dread, I chugged my coffee and proceeded to drive home as if I was driving a hearse with the backdoor open (i.e. very carefully).
Like the child I keep telling myself I’m not, the first thing I did when I got home was text my father. Yep, the guy who considers himself a car enthusiast calls his dad the moment a car-related problem arises. But hey, considering the fact that he’s taught me everything I know about cars, there was never another option. After assuring me that my car wasn’t a ticking time bomb, my father suggested I head over to Autozone the next day. Not to buy parts, but to have them “read” the check engine light for free. To put it simply, almost every auto parts store or repair shop (like Autozone) has these devices that plug into your car and find out what’s causing its warning lights to turn on. In the case of my car, the check engine light turned on because, “the Powertrain Control Module detected malfunction in its internal engine off timer processor.” Don’t you just love those sentences of which you understand each individual word, but not the sentence itself? Me neither.
After staring at the Autozone employee as if he had spoken to me in a language not of this world, I asked him what I should do, hoping it would be as simple as buying a part and installing it myself. Of course it wasn’t that simple, but I think part of me already knew that before I asked. The only thing I could do was bring my car to the nearest Ford dealer and have them fix it. So, after I got back from Autozone I put on my grown-up pants, called the nearest Ford dealer, and set up an appointment for the following week.
A day or so before the appointment, I got a letter from Ford about an update for the electronic system on the car I was driving. This actually turned out to be great timing, since I could kill two birds with one stone and not have to worry about setting up another appointment. So, that next morning I dropped off my car at the dealer’s, along with both the paperwork Autozone gave me about the check engine light and the letter from Ford, and I was told I could pick it up later in the afternoon. At that moment, I thought I felt what parents must feel when they drop their kids off at school for the first time. Which is ridiculous, since unlike when parents pick their kids up at school, I know my car will work when I pick it up from the dealer. Anyway, after a few hours I got a call from the dealer that my car was all fixed and ready to go. Fortunately, my car was under warranty, so this whole ordeal only cost a bit of my sanity. And as an added bonus, they fixed my audio system, which was never fully configured for some reason.
But at the end of the day, part of me wished my car’s problem was something I could have fixed myself. While I’m by no means a mechanic, I’m fortunate enough to have a father who grew up in a time when being a car enthusiast meant being a mechanic, or more specifically, a “shadetree mechanic.” Shadetree mechanics were folks who fixed up cars not in repair shops, but in driveways, home garages, and as the name suggests, under the shade of a tree. I admit I’m a bit proud of the fact that I can change a tire or brake pads, but I’m lost as soon as I look under the hood. And since most cars’ engines these days are encased in plastic coverings, anyone who might know what they’re doing under the hood usually can’t fix whatever problem they’re having, even though they have the capacity to do so. So, while cars have almost exclusively changed for the better over the years, from catalytic converters to Bluetooth audio, we should consider what we’re giving up in return.
