Our parents have long thought that we would end up married eventually–the Man from GM and me. Neither of us have thought this, though, as it’s only been in recent years that we can spend longer than 12 hours together without one of us vowing to never speak to the other again.
Now, I realize there are many marriages out there where the spouses don’t speak, but the Man from GM and I are well aware that, if we were ever to get married, the marriage would quickly end with one of us dead and the other of us in prison. He thinks he would end up killing me–and maybe with his driving?–but I think it’s more likely that I would shoot him dead about the fourth day into our marriage.
That doesn’t prevent us from being dear friends. In fact, I think knowing that we would never work as a couple is what keeps us such good friends after knowing each other half our lives. We never wonder wistfully, “Oh, what if we’d just tried it, just to see what happened?” Because we both know how it would go–pain, suffering, and homicide.
All that being said, when it come to my car, I’m all the time claiming that the Man from GM is my fiance. I’ll call him up and say “Hey, Man from GM, my car is going blickity blickity whenever it gets over 50” (or something similar) and he’ll be all “That’s your such and such valve. You’ve got to figure on that running you about $100 and $100 for labor.”
And then I go into my mechanic and say, “My car is going blickity blickity whenever it gets over 50” and my mechanic will be all like “That’s probably your such and such valve. I can fix it for about $200.”
But sometimes, when I have to take it into the dealer, the dealer will be all “Oh, that’s probably your whole whatchamacallit system and your computer. That’ll run you $1500.” And I’m all like, “Oh really, because my fiance is an engineer at GM and he says it’s just the such and such valve.”
“Well, ma’am, I’m telling you…”
“Why don’t we get him on the phone?”
And considering I had to do this quite regularly to keep the old Cavalier running, it was really useful, especially when the Man from GM started hollering about how he knew the guy that designed the car and he could get him on the phone if it’d be useful.
But, alas, now I drive a Dodge.
Now, it’s sitting at Jim Reed Chevrolet–still. Yes, still. God damn, I’m dying.–and so I suppose the Man from GM could call and make a pain in the ass of himself and get me my car, but I’m just not ready to admit to him that I can’t take care of this myself.
But for real, if they don’t have my god damn car done by tomorrow, I’m going to kidnap a certain surly libertarian, get him good and mean drunk, and threaten to let him loose inside their building unless I have my ass in my own vehicle, pronto.
Tiny Cat Pants 
It’s like going to the gym. Body work just takes a long time.
My car seems to have been in "clean-up" for a day and a half now, though. How much cleanup could it need?
Aunt B.There could be a friends and family discount in your future if you would consider a GM car!!..Tri
Really? How badass is that new Camero going to be? You could buy me one of those.