You’re suspicious of fluids.

You haven’t even let them change your oil since that time you went in for a nice simple fluid flush, and ’suddenly’ your radiator developed a fatal leak, and–as you relate passionately…

You’re suspicious of fluids.

You haven’t even let them change your oil since that time you went in for a nice simple fluid flush, and ’suddenly’ your radiator developed a fatal leak, and–as you relate passionately at any provocation, including running out of orange juice–you just know it was caused by the willful stabbing of a well-placed screwdriver. But, here it is, fall, and along with winter gas and winter tires, you know you’re going to have to do it. You’re going to submit to–nay, deliberately procure!–undercoating.

You’re not really wild about this either. The way the guy slinks under your vehicle, cigarette dangling from clenched lips as he gives it the hose, makes you feel uncomfortable and sleazy. Even if he had just been frisked for screwdrivers, which of course he wasn’t.

When he’s done, you feel unclean. For what you witnessed, and what you paid for it, and for that awful smell that lingers for weeks, streaming that filthy memory through your frontal lobes as you go from work and home and bank and bakery. It even seems to carry in with the orange juice that you finally remember to pick up from the grocery store.

Of course, you’re literally unclean too, because that creeping oil has a special fondness for clothes. Your pants alone look like they were staring in an action blockbuster, perhaps something like Speed, except with more demand on the calves. And these are great pants. They’re the longest most honest relationship you’ve had with anybody, and you include your own mother in that statement. Pants love is unconditional. You want to apologise to them for the unfairness of it all.

But you can’t.

You need the undercoating. You resisted, you abstained that one year, and as a result the majority of your rockers are duct tape. Lumpy vaguely paint-coloured duct tape. The rust got you and got you good. It gobbled your car like a hyper three year old on a fresh Hershey’s, leaving holes you could wiggle your fist around in, gaps that made you feel like you were back in Shop class, watching Wesley Freedle learn the intimates of planer safety.

So you gave in, and you do it, you grimly report and let them hose you. Because deny, resist, object, you know, deep down in your pants where it matters, that it’s that undercoating–not the duct tape–that is holding the universe together.