June 12, 2002 // 9:46 p.m. // More car problems? (or how the Ford is like a song)
The box office was closed. Or at least I think it was. There was no one there, and not lights were on. So I headed to a different place that may have the tickets. Again, they were closed. Only on my way to this place, my car started making unusual sounds and the temperature was getting hot. Plus, it smelled odd. So immediately I pulled into the Sears parking lot and popped the hood. It was a repeat of the scene from May 27th, the day my car was apparently, "fixed." It was smoking. More like steaming. And I noticed that the oil cap wasn't on it, and the fan belt had likely fallen off. A trail of oil leaked from the bottom of the car. The parking lot is just about three miles from my house, so I decided to take my chances. After all, the steam had subsided, and from here on, I could easily take only side streets. Just two blocks from here, the battery light came on. I thought that was odd, as my battery was replaced last summer. As I turned onto my first side street, the power steering went. "Great", I thought. More side streets, and the car got tougher to steer. By the time I finally got home, I was frustrated, and let my dad check out the car. And for the first time, I realized that my car was like a game of Jenga. You lose one part, they all fall. The oil leaked because the power steering failed. The power steering failed because the oil mechanism wasn't acting right. And why did that fail? Water pump. And why did the water pump fail? It had something to do with something else. The battery went out because the alternator failed. The alternator failed because the fan belt came off and dragged beneath the car. And before you know it, the hip bone is connected to the shin bone, and you have a vehicle in which the only thing working correctly is the stereo and the speakers. Oh, and at this point, I'm frustrated, right? So my sister asks me to take her to the store in the Pontiac. I rolled my eyes at the neighbor kid parked on his bike in front of our house, and flipped off the kids playing football on ths side of the road just down the street. That was more because the brakes are terrible on the Pontiac, and the horn doesn't work. The football bounced right out in front of me, and had a child run after it, it would have been hard to stop. The ball hit my car and bounced under, but it still doesn't make sense to me as to why the kids were still throwing the football with a car no more than ten feet away. All of our neighborhood kids are like that. I was the total opposite. My friends and I would stop playing as soon as a car turned onto the street, and that'd mean they were at least a half block away. But I still have to track down a way to get a ticket to tomorrow's show. And I was supposed to call someone earlier today, but I let too much time lapse. Plus, I'm hungry. I see mac and cheese in the near future. Jason Last time on Apexsensatin : Now on Apex : Apex Archives : Next time on ApexsensatinI headed out just over an hour ago to pick up a concert ticket for The Get Up Kids show tomorrow. I have yet to go to a concert at this venue, and their email link doesn't work, so I had no clue how to obtain tickets.