Marriage Whoa!

Thinking about getting married? Then you should think about buying a car, because they are not dissimilar events, even though your age might drive the features you want in each one.

When you buy a car when you are 18, you want something racy, sporty, good looking, something that you can wrap your arms around and yell, “Yeah, that’s my car and you cannot believe it's mine!” Likewise, perhaps for the women of your dreams.

If you wait until you are 30 to buy a car or get married, you might be looking for a little more comfort, something with good gas mileage but with excellent features.

At 45, mid-life crisis time for some guys, you revert back to racy and flashy, perhaps a younger model than most people would expect you driving or dating.

At age 60, it is all about comfort. Does the car of your dreams come with seat warmers and the woman of your dreams with BenGay? Does it come with 18 cup holders to hold your sunglasses, reading glasses, internet glasses, glare screens, night vision shades, soda bottle, pill bottles, hand sanitizer, Lifesavers, loose change, pencils and pens, notepad and last but not least coffee gift cards. It maybe the first car you ever own that you recline the seats to see how a nap would feel while your wife runs “quickly” into a store that you would pay not to go into. Odds are your wife will not even test the recline feature!

I was fortunate enough to have better luck at 21 with my marriage than I was at picking out cars. When I first met Judy, I had a 1972 Mercury Capri, 2000cc engine that would race up and down Interstate 99 to Los Angeles faster than a desert hare could escape a coyote. 312 miles in less than 3 hours, 20 minutes. The speed limit back then was whatever was safe. Then a friend(?) of mine mentioned that if I ever wanted to get a car that “fit” me, I should get it before we were married, otherwise I would have “input”. So, the idiot that I was, I traded in my Capri for a Toyota Land Cruiser, which could not have been any more opposite. After all, I was into kayaking, backpacking, and fishing so why would I not have a vehicle that could go off road?

Here is why! The heater sucked. It could not have melted an ice cube if I had driven to Omaha. It bounced and heaved like it had the suspension of a 400-foot pedestrian suspension bridge on a windy day, it was LOUD, I mean like western music bar room loud, and it was drafty. So, when I first put the woman of my dreams into the car of my dreams, it was like tossing onions on my cereal. I thought it would be more like strawberries and cereal. Or bananas and cereal. Nope. Definitely onions.

So we struggled with that car only until we could afford to trade out of it and into this beauty of a car that I picked out…a 1973 Austin Marina.

It seemed like a good family car, especially when compared to the Cruiser. But the more we drove it, the more we both came to hate it. One of the tires went flat a few weeks after we bought it and when I tried to remove it, the bolt holding the tire on sheered off. These tires did not have nuts that twisted on to hold the tires…oh no…they were bolts! With the tensile strength of a bendy straw!

That car stayed with us until we welcomed our first child and Judy’s mom flew out to visit us. We took a trip to the mall (12 miles away) where her mom purchased a playpen for our little ball of joy. It fit in the trunk but the trunk would not close, so I tied it down. When we hit 40 miles per hour, the air from the trunk pushed the headliner down on all of us, so here we were, driving down this two lane 55-mph road, with what equated to a rooftop airbag that had deployed. When I slowed to 30 mph, we were able to push it up and it stayed. So, we limped home at 30 mph and all kinds of people waved at us in one form or fashion! The day we took her mom back to the airport to fly home, the starter went out, but that is an entirely other story to tell later!

Judy picked out the next 37 cars and they have been fine ever since. All I’m saying is that there can be a certain “adventure” to car purchasing, unless you go the two-car family route. Now remember, when we were first married, my income was just over $9,000, so the only way we could afford two cars was if one came in the Cracker Jacks box. But now, 23 wonderful years of marriage later, we have a very comfortable car that warms me at the push of a button. That’s right, the seat warmer! Yes, I will finish this finally by saying the other 23 years have been pure torment!

Joe Alpaca – Marriage is like a bee hive. Sweet and dangerous and all abuzz!

PEACE OUT!!!