Not-So-Standard
Here, in the quite Sunset community where the Skelton Ranch is allowed to stretch out, relax, and ready itself for the rainy season, a peculiar phoneme is taking place. It seems that our newly purchased car, the 2006 VW Passat, is turning out to be way more of a celebrity than the humans that drive the darn thing. It’s as if the Skelton family is living in its own meta-VW car commercial where the neighbors come out of their homes to talk to our car instead of us. It begs the question: is it possible for car owners to become jealous of their vehicle’s popularity? If we were ever to move away, I fear people would say, “I remember the car who lived in that house – the people, not so much.” Personally, I can’t compete with the feature set of my new ride. It’s got 120 of ’em and each one has a quirky and irreverent film to show it off. I can only think of like…11 features that I have and the misses would probably call half of those ‘personality defects’. But 120?!? That ain’t right.

Although I really do like this car a lot, i’ve really never been much of a ‘car guy’. I’m just thankful if a car runs. I don’t ‘notice’ cars. All my neighbors could bring home new cars tomorrow and I wouldn’t have the slightest idea that the auto-landscape had changed one cylinder. Perhaps this means I’m self-absorbed. Maybe…Maybe Not. But many of my neighbors, who until last week hadn’t even bothered to give a friendly wave or the customary head-nod when the eye-contact of opportunity presented itself, now fall over each other for the chance to flirt with my car. If I had a nickel for every one who’s said, “So…new car?”, I’d have enough to buy expensive wool socks. Really, anytime I see someone coming up the driveway to say hello I look for a fast exit or a large bush to hide behind. I do this because these people (all men), want to talk about the car. Specifically, they want me to be able to go through the entire feature list of the car and answer all these questions about engine size and gas milage that, for reasons I can’t explain, my brain has deemed totally useless and straight up refuses to retain. In a pinch, I usually tell them how good the stereo sounds and invite them into the passenger seat to see how much they enjoy listening to high decibel Slayer on a ‘DynaAudio 600 Watt -10 Speaker Sound System’.