The Hybrid

In my typical hasty, under-researched way, I plunged into the world of car-buying last week, and came up with a 2005 Honda Accord Hybrid.

The reasons for my choice had almost nothing to do with the car itself, and almost everything to do with how I want to perceive myself (once again, G as in Good... has my number).

• I want to drive a car that's much less expensive and much less ostentatious than the BMW's my business partners/brothers-in-law drive -- a kind of reverse snobbism to which my biological family is prone, and one that sets me in cozy counterpoint to the materialism I deride even as it sustains me.
• I want a car that looks like all the other cars on the road, until you get right up behind it.
• Then I want the driver behind me to see the word "Hybrid" in little silver letters and think, "Shit... That asshole thinks he's superior to me because he's using less gas." Well, not superior, exactly. But let's not split hairs.
• I want my kids to see that the kind of conveyance I choose has different status markers than the ones they're encouraged by their surroundings and peers to choose. (My older (step)daughter apparently was peeved at my relatively pedestrian choice of cars.) To me, something marginally attractive but with a nod to financial and environmental economy is way better than the many cars on the road that consume space, air, gasoline, metal, other drivers' ability to see...
• I am a "hybrid." I run on two different kinds of engines: the practical and the spiritual. I'm a dad, and a step-dad. I'm an athlete, and a lazy fart. I am composed of radically different systems working in harmony to propel me in the proper direction -- whatever that is.

I struggle to understand how my (step)daughter, or anyone else, can so need a thing to complete or complement their identity. And yet, in the bullet points above, I've done precisely that, only in a supposedly more noble, less consumptive way. My reactive counter-choice is proof of my anti-snob elitism: she definitely factored into my choice of car, so that a negative of her value system was imprinted on the experience, and on the car itself.

I wonder if sea shells get jealous of each other. The shell is really an elaborate armament created by the creature that lives within it. It isn't the living thing, but it's essential to the survival of the living thing that created it. It's a clumsy, armored conveyance, something like a car, and yet more essential to its inhabitant's survival than a car is to us (although not by much).

And let's face it, a shell makes a statement. Its design not only helps protect the animal, it creates an aesthetically pleasing envelope around little more than a writhing booger. A sea shell is almost a conscious pronouncement of design and intent, a proclamation of identity improbably formed by its protoplasmic tenant.

I wonder: Do shells peek out at other shells and think: "That bastard. Who does he think he is, with all those delicate colors and symmetrical spirals? Friggin' show-off..." ?

They might as well. Then we'd be alike in almost every way: living our days shell-shopping, hoping excitedly that others will see and salute us for choosing what, in fact, is not us at all.

--T.A.

Comments

[amba]

"a kind of reverse snobbism to which my biological family is prone, and one that sets me in cozy counterpoint to the materialism I deride even as it sustains me."

That's the kind of sentence Alan Gottlieb (Dad's brother) used to write.

"I am a "hybrid." I run on two different kinds of engines: the practical and the spiritual. I'm a dad, and a step-dad. I'm an athlete, and a lazy fart. I am composed of radically different systems working in harmony to propel me in the proper direction -- whatever that is."

Marvelous piece of self-insight!! Mon vehicle, c'est moi. I'd love to hear some other people decode how their cars express them. (My car, which is used but in good shape, and a lot more powerful than it looks, is called "Emmy" both for "Emerald" -- it's green, and my first car was named "Ruby" -- and also for "M E.")

[amba]

"it creates an aesthetically pleasing envelope around little more than a writhing booger."

ROTFLMAO! Now that's a real Fort Myers Beach metaphor.

[Danny]

Funny to imagine anyone deriding that choice of vehicle as not being "cool" enough—here you'd be the hippest cat in town with Cameron Diaz waving you down from her Prius (and I hear the Honda hybrid is much better than that celebrity favorite). Remember, they had a special lane just for you people at the Oscars last Sunday! Mazel tov—from everything I've read, you chose very well.

The thought that my sad little 1994 Honda Civic is an expression of myself is plunging me into a major mood swing. I try and try to keep it nice but it always seems to be filling up with papers and other crap, making my daily experience in the car line at Leah's school even more shame-based. I know the botoxed drivers of those Lexus SUVs I'm always sandwiched between tend to look right past me. But I'll have the last laugh—those folks would bust a liposuctioned gut if they got a little knick or scratch on their pristine vehicles while I wouldn't care if I rammed my 11-year-old car into Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

[david]

Well, Danny, don't forget, you're dealing with a Midwestern, suburban adolescent here: what passes for primo in this neck of the woods is a far cry from the cutting edge of cool, on which you live. And for what it's worth, I'd love to park that thing in the lobby of Grauman's with you.

[hazela]

loved it...really wanted to buy the highlander hybird but it's not out yet...perfect combination of SUV so I 'fit in' size wise on the US road and hybrid so I feel less like a gas guzzler of precious resources...oh well next time round.
One of my favourite ways to while away time on the roads is to see if the person in the car I'm approaching matches my expectations...kinda like that owners resemble their dogs thing.
Usually it does, but occaisonally you get a joyful surprise...hip young thing driving a lincoln town car.
My mother in law chooses her cars from the size of the trunk...gotta love diversity of choice

[Eric Wilner]

I've been driving a Prius for a bit over 3 years now... it's a nice little car, handles well, gets me where I'm going, has no problem hauling a full load of people over the mountains to the coast, and in general does 95% of what I need a vehicle for, while averaging 45 MPG or so. For that other 5%, I have an aging Jeep Cherokee as a knockabout / utility / mud wagon.
As an extra-nice feature, the Prius has that big high-voltage battery in the trunk, with plenty of power for a pop-up Mk. VII plasma cannon. Laugh at my little car, will you? Muahahahaha!