Two-Face

Two-Face was never my favourite villian. Well, are you suppose to have a favourite villian? I think mine is Enigma (I am now, of course, only speaking of the Batman villians). But I did like Two-Face's habit of flipping his coin to decide what to do in a situation.

My car, my poor car has become two-faced. Litterally. When you look at my car from the passanger side, it looks near perfect. There is but one tiny dent caused by someone in a neighbouring parking space opening their door, but that may have been there since before I got my car. When you walk around, however, you find a very, very different view. It started two years ago when I “lost” the strip1 that runs over the bottom of the driver's door. It might have simple fallen off, but I believe someone actually stole it. The reason for this theory is that it is extremely hard to find parts for the model of my car, hence none of what I mention here has been fixed or replaced. Then, last year someone stole my rear right hubcap (this was actually stolen). The hubcaps are cheap plastic covers, but they are much better to look at than the wheels' bolts. So now I am missing one strip and one hubcap, all on the same side of the car. But the most notable disfiguration happened last year: some (prosumable drunken) idiot rammed into my car where it was parked on the side of the road. I still don't know how it happened, because it must have been quite a feat to actually hit my car at that particular angle. Not only was the driver's door now missing a strip, but it had huge, ugly dent in it. We tried to get the door fixed, but the panelbeaters said that, if they simple knocked out the dent, the door would lose its structural integrity and be quite useless in protecting me if someone drove into the driver's door. They said they would try to find a new door, but once again the search came to nought. The latest tragedy for my car happened yesterday: I was in a hurry and forget to clear a beam when reversing out of my parking spot. That crunching sound of metal on metal is horrible. I caused a significant in the bodywork right above the front right wheel. It was so bad that the tire hit against dented-in bodywork whenever I when over or through a bump. Of course this had to change, so I just bent (“butchered” would probably be a better word) the dent out a bit with a wrench. It wasn't pretty, but we can't afford to go to panelbeaters at this time.

*Sighs and rubs temples* This is the umpteenth thing that has gone wrong with my car in the past half a year. The following has also happened:

• The fanbelt broke. As the fanbelt was disintegrating, it sounded like a flail tearing up my engine. This happened right before New Year, so I wasn't just a matter of going to the nearest shop and buying a new one.
• After that my car had a service. This isn't a problem in itself, but one would expect that they would do a full check-up of your car and catch potential problems, right? Read on.
• After the service I was told I needed a new CV joint. I wasn't happy with a noise from the wheels after that job, but I continue on.
• Some time later my car suffered a complete loss of engine power. The problem? I need a new top gasket. Ouch. My car is still trying to recover some of the power (I'm told it takes a while).
• A while ago I started to notice a burning smell in the car (I also noticed steam coming out from underneath the bonnet, but apparently that was something unrelated). It turned out that I needed a new clutch disk. $$$ bye bye bye.

The only saving grace is that we are on pretty good terms with our mechanic. So, if the car breaks in Bellville it is much better than breaking in Stellenbosch. Apart from all this, on both occations that I was forced to borrow my dad's car, my dad's car broke down in my hands. It wasn't my fault, mind you: my dad's car isn't exactly well kept.

I just don't have the strength, patience and understanding to deal with all these problems. Please, please, please let everything just be over now...