Volvo Odyssey

The week before last, I was supposed to take my road test to get my California driver's license. That's right: I get to show that I know how to signal and shoulder-check and parallel park. This is because I don't have a license from another state already. My British friend Claire told me that during her road test the examiner spent the whole time talking about his kids and showed her pictures of them while she was driving. Was that part of the test? I guess not: she looked at them and still passed. It is kind of comical to think of being examined on your driving skills in Los Angeles. How hard can it be to pass? Can you drive really fast on the freeway? Yes: pass. My favorite LA driving move, is the blinker signaling one direction and then the car turning in the opposite direction. Along with people in neck braces and mattresses on the side of the freeway, a sign of my California home.

But I didn't take my road test, because my car's brake lights weren't working. Come January, my car will be 20 years old. I'm seriously considering throwing it a party when it turns 21. Taking it to Vegas maybe. It's a Volvo, the old kind, the kind that shows up as a character's car in a certain kind of movie more than any other car. In fact, my car has been in a lot of movies, from the first thing I ever made for school, to other people's shorts, to the 546 I produced, to the feature I worked on this summer. It's a famous car.

And because I love my car so much, I stand by it during the tough times. This year, I've probably dropped 2 grand on repairing it and getting it shipshape for registering it in California. I do this because I still see many Volvos of the same age and older on the road, and a lot of the parts that I'm currently replacing are original. This is my car's tough year. This is its return of Saturn year (the planet, not the car). The bureaucratic process of getting the car registered in California has taken six months of appointments and paperwork and repairs. I just got the plates in the mail last weekend, and it's now officially a California car. Too bad the California plates are so boring and cheesy.

Anyway, just got it back from repairs: the brake lights are working, it has new spark plugs and new fuel filters and changed oil and topped up washer fluid. And the back compartment continues to be maggot-free.