I Buy a Car

"Toto, we're not in the Big Apple any more." I've joined the world of suburbia and bought a car. It's an old car but it has features that are new to me since I last owned a car -- which was 1981. The windows don't have cranks, there is a sun roof, it warns me when I'm about to leave with the key still in it and does other wonders that most car driving Americans take for granted. I have undergone various forms of culture shock, this is yet one more and I know very well I will acclimate to it very easily and speedily.

The first night I lived in NYC and left my car on the street it was broken into. It was no a good car and there was nothing in it to steal but those were the days when every morning, in the Upper West Side, one saw piles of auto glass on the street from the cars that had been broken into the night before. [This doesn't happen much any more in that part of the city.] I sold the car that week for pennies. I've used public transportation since except when I rented cards when visiting relatives Thus I have a great clean driving record on my license. I am over 65, I get discounts on my auto insurance that, naturally!, I think are well deserved. I'm sure there will be problems. Aren't there always? But it was bought for my granddaughter by my daughter and her husband and the facts they gave me about the car can be trusted which is rarely the case in buying a used car. So I'm adjusting, mentally to being a real, red-blooded, car owning American again. Boing! That's my self-perception ricochetting.