Silver Lining Looking Haggard

Don’t you hate people who name their cars? I call mine The Silver Lining. Not only because it’s silver, at least in its original state, but because it was the consolation prize for having my old car totaled by a reckless SUV driver last spring.

I loved that old car. But the Silver Lining is my dream car. A Nissan Altima hybrid, the design is wonderfully aerodynamic, combining the look of a sleek sporty sedan in the front with the old-fashioned boxy lights in the rear. I’ve always wanted an Altima, and to get a hybrid of this model is quite rare in Colorado. And the name, Silver Lining, reminds me of the golden age of rail travel when the title of the train contributed mightily to the excitement of the journey: The California Zephyr; The 20th Century Limited; The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe; The “D” – Ok, maybe not that one…

I don’t have a key for my cool, modern car, just a FOB. Don’t ask me what that means. All I know is that if the FOB is in my pocket, I can push the start button and the quiet electric engine will turn on. The little electronic hum is all that you can hear when first accelerating, before the regular gas engine kicks in. One friend said it felt like she was in a space ship. Of course, she was on pain killers at the time.

It feels great to have a car to be proud of, that people are interested in. Of course, I don’t understand how it works at all. When asked how much power it has or how big the engine is, all I can say is, “Look, it’s a pretty silver!”

I’m sure I’m not unusual in that when I first got the car, I vowed to always keep it clean and in good condition for years and years.

There is, however, the matter of my parking space.

The first car I had when I lived at Bowling Green Condominiums, a little 1994 Sentra, zipped right in and out of the assigned space which consists of an overhead roof and two solid rusty brown polls delineating my spot from my neighbor’s. The next car, the one totaled last May, was a 2002 Sentra, slightly bigger, which I had to slowly enter the space so I wouldn’t hit the polls.

The Silver Lining is nice and wide, sizeable enough to seat passengers comfortably in back, and long enough to have a roomy trunk.

But those big rusty polls haven’t moved. I didn’t have the Silver Lining for even a couple weeks before I hit the fender against one of them, adding a dark, rusty finish along the front right bumper.

Being so very careful watching the fender a few weeks later, I scraped and dented the right rear door, chipping off some of the beautiful silver paint.

Ever so careful again, I was pulling in one day, watching so as not to hit the left poll, when the right side mirror got caught. As the car kept moving, that awful sound of the mirror cover crunching caused my insides to wince. My Facebook entry that day: “I just can’t have nice things.”

The Silver Lining was starting to look like a piece of junk.

But there’s more.

I have this habit of pulling up as far as I can into a parking space. Unfortunately, this means I scrape the bottom of the car against those concrete parking space things. The other day as I was flying down the Valley Highway, I heard this kind of flapping sound from underneath. I knew what it was. Sure enough, the “splash guard” was hanging down.

So I’ve decided that my car, which I’ve owned for just over six months, needs to look new again. This week, it’s going in for some cosmetic surgery. Don’t ask me how much it’s going to cost, just be assured that I won’t pay off the loan as quickly as I’d originally planned. But it’s worth driving a beautiful car of which I can be proud.

And I’m going to be so careful from now on. I vow to keep it clean and in good condition for years to come.