spent last night pretending to be a tough guy by replacing the water pump on my car. my hands and shirt got all greasy, and i was feeling it. i was totally a man. totally.

anyway, i fixed my water pump, so my car doesn't sound like a toolbox rolling down a hill. instead, it now squeaks like a mouse and stalls whenever i take my foot off the gas pedal for any reasonable amount of time.

yesterday i decided i should be nicer to my car, maybe talk to it a little, maybe even give it a name. so during a conversation with Tom and Danny, I quickly came up with the name "Oswald."

they told me it was ridiculous and laughable because cars are supposed to have girl names. which i never understood, because cars don't seem like girls to me. if anything, my car is a guy. maybe i'd give a car a girl's name if it was a Mazda Miata or a Neon or a VW Bug (odd, considering Herbie was a bug). but a Chevy Lumina (with bench seats and my grandfather's old man smell still lingering in it, a car that people find hard believing it is only ten years old) is most definitely a guy. an old curmudgeon of a guy. Oswald

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