We don't own stuff;

stuff owns us.

In the human life, necessity dictates the accumulation of a certain amount of stuff. We need things to survive: we need clothes, we need food, we need shelter. In order to secure a reliable flow of clothes, food, and shelter, we acquire other things--more stuff--in order to procure the basic necessities. For instance, most of us acquire a car at some point in our lives, for without such transportation, the work which brings home the bacon would become economically infeasible or impossible.

When we acquire stuff, we use the colloquial phrase "I own thus-and-such" to indicate that we have purchased the stuff. So we might say, We own two cars.

There is a certain amount of truth to this. We hold the deed to the car. The car only goes where we direct it to go. And if someone stole it, we could file charges and get it back. So in an important sense, we own our car.

In another important sense, our car owns us.

By simply failing to perform or behave as cars optimally ought, our vehicle can command time, money, and energy to fly from other places in our life. With a single obedient application of the law of entropy, our car can force me to spend hours, dollars, and effort that I thought had already been allocated elsewhere. When it does that, it becomes clear that our stuff owns me.

Let me give an example.

A few weeks ago, I had just pulled out of the church parking lot for a 30-minute drive when both headlights went out. That's right, both of them. Daylight savings had just changed over, so it was dark. I had to become "that guy" who's always on the other side of the road from you who's driving with his high-beams on. And the next day, I had to hunt down the right bulbs to replace the halogens in our 2005 Hyundai. When I took the casing for the headlights out, I discovered that the right front casing  had broken two of its plastic mounts. Now I had to replace the bulbs and glue the mounts back on.

Here's the pirate car, midway through the ocular operation. Aarg!

While I was under the hood, I decided to do some repair work that I've been stalling on since we bought the car. The last owner had modified the car to have a more urban appeal. About a hundred yards of speaker wire run underneath all the seats in the car; on the inside of the visor were "beer pong" stickers; and under the hood was an air intake:

This device is meant to increase power. However, it requires cleaning every week. The standard air filter--which the racing enthusiast took out--only needs changing every six months or so. I wanted the old-school air filter back.

While I was taking the air intake out, I glued on the mounts for the headlamp casing and clamped it with a clamp not designed for the purpose. But it worked--for the time being. Here is it chillin' in our living-room-come-auto-shop:

I got the air intake out with ease, and then set about the task of installing the air cleaner box. This had been procured from a local parts store:

After about twenty minutes of wrestling with the mounting screws to get the air box on, I made the following discovery:

Can you see what's not there? That's right: the elbow that runs from the air cleaner box to the engine block is missing. Funny, when I ordered the box from the parts shop, they didn't tell me that I might need that part, too.

So I called them back and told them what I needed. Alas, they did not have one on hand. So I called up the Hyundai dealership, who told me that ordering one would take three days. Sigh. When I gave them my credit card number and shuffled my calendar, I thought I heard a mechanical giggle from our driveway. Who was in the driver's seat now?

I put the air intake back in, so we could continue driving the car (albeit dirty) until I could get the elbow joint.

Meanwhile, I replaced the headlamp casing, complete with sexy new halogen bulbs. The plastic mounts cracked again as soon as I tightened them down. Sigh. (A new casing costs $150--not worth it. The casing has survived the last 6 months with cracked mounts--why can't it last another 24?) But the car does have functional new headlights. At least I won't inspire crude gestures from oncoming drivers anymore.

Three days and one more 40-mile roundtrip to Binghamton later, I go to pick up the elbow piece. I get the piece out to the car, open up the bag, and discover that it's the wrong piece. I go back into the dealership and ask them what's up.

"Oh, you own that 2005 Hyundai Elantra GT."

Well, yes and no. I have one, but I don't own it. It owns me. And it's The Special Needs model. The one with an asterisk next to the part numbers on the "air filter" page of the manual. Sigh.

Three days later, Hyundai has the right part for me. (I am saved a trip to Binghamton to pick it up by a friend--thanks, Sharen!) So two weeks after I began the project of changing headlights and air filter assemblies, I've finally got the engine I want in our Silver Bullet:

And here's a close-up of my Special Needs air filter assembly:

I still had to jerry-rig the bolts under the air filter box. They gave me the wrong kind of bolts, too. But you know what? I didn't feel like waiting another three days for the right parts. And as long as I don't hear the air cleaner knocking against the underside of the hood, I don't care what's holding it in place.

Someday the Silver Bullet will do something to assert its authority again over my schedule and checkbook. But for now, we own the car again. I'm in charge of this vehicle. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

~emrys