I don't know shift

I have decided that the key difference between those of you who are age 21 (and, let's admit it, not likely to be reading this blog) and those of us who are age 46 comes down to this simple example: You, oh young one, would spend on the spot $20k on a car with a manual transmission, even though you don't know how to operate a stick shift. You would learn how to drive the car in the parking lot of the dealership, thanks to assistance from the especially perky (yet ultimately venal) salesperson. You would eventually drive the car home, stalling it out several times along the way, but wouldn't become too flustered, finally getting the hang of it. Then you would praise the benefits of standard transmission to any and everyone.

I, on the other hand, would not. I would not buy the car because the thought of plonking down $20k on a car (or at least securing a loan for such an amount) with a stick shift that I do not know how to drive seems the height of folly. Even if I've already skidded dangerously into deadman's curve folly territory by agreeing to a "test ride" of a tricked out 2005 Mini Cooper with 45,000 miles and, oh yes, lest we forget, a manual transmission, which, as mentioned, I do not know how to drive. Nor am I willing to learn how to drive on the spot of a Carmax dealership in Columbus, Ohio, even if it means that I have 200 miles ahead of me for practice.

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I have, as you might have guessed, been car-shopping. In fact, I have been car-shopping for the last three or four years. Or, rather, I have been "car-talking," or better still, "car-musing"--thinking out loud about buying a car for that long. I've certainly checked listings, read reviews, scoped out Vehix, Cars, and Edmunds dot coms, and purchased updated editions of Consumer Report's guides to new, used, and best of cars for at least the last couple of years.

And, yet, I didn't really get serious about buying a new car (at least a new-to-me car) until this spring. My 12-year-old, unforgivably teal-colored Subaru finally rounded up to and over 150,000 miles. While it's still running gangbusters, even as I make treks across the Commonwealth for meetings in Harrisburg and the like, I worry that its time is running out.

And at 46 years of age with the toll plaza on life's turnpike that is 47 looming just down the road, I worry that my time is running out as well. The time may be now, in the throes of mid-life, to finally go all-out and buy a slightly wild, kinda crazy, reasonably distinctive car. A car that says "I'm equal parts fun and practicality, but right now I'm concentrating on the fun."

Thus, this urge led me this past weekend to a Carmax in Ohio to try out a Mini Cooper. A magnetic blue Mini Cooper with sunroof, sound system, leather seats, a sporty engine, great gas mileage, a stick shift (as we well know by now), and no discernible trunk space. So much for practicality, but I am liking this concept called fun.

I came to the car-buying game late in life, only having purchased my first car at age 39, the same one I have now. Heretofore, I have managed to live in places where I rarely needed a car (Washington, D.C., for seven years) or benefited from the generosity of parents and siblings with their high-quality hand-me-down vehicles. (Hondas, lots and lots of Hondas.)

I've tended to see cars as what they are--a personal mode of conveyance, something to, as Edina Monsoon from Absolutely Fabulous would say, "get me from A to B and [to] do a little shopping." Except, unlike Edina, when I needed to downsize to a smaller vehicle, I went with a Subaru Impreza, not a Porsche Boxster.

Even in auto-centric Texas, where the car is el rey, la reina, y sus hijos, all I really cared about was my car's functionality and reliability--most importantly, whether the air-conditioning was working properly, which was one of the auto's most necessary functions in the climatic Hell on Earth that is the Lone Star State. Mostly I drove to work, to dinner out, and to parks to go hiking. Occasionally, I also drove to Houston, to Big Bend, to Dallas, the Rio Grande Valley, Corpus Christi, or los dos Laredos. Or, once even, away from the state entirely to God's Jagged Little Pill, Pennsylvania.

But for anything else, Texas was so big, I just ended up flying. Currently, I have enough frequent flier miles on Continental to go to Asia, Australia, or Africa, which I really need to do at some point. By the time I turn 50 perhaps, should Continental still be in business at that moment, and as soon as I get this fun thing down pat.

Since moving back East in 2004, I have spent a lot more time in cars--commuting from Frederick, Maryland, to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, then commuting from the Harrisburg area to Gettysburg. Now, even though I commute on foot to work most days, I make regular jaunts up and down the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which requires the use of a sturdy, reliable vehicle to maneuver at 65 mph (OK, 70 mph . . . OK, OK, 75 mph) over hundreds of miles, thousands of patches, and seemingly millions of tar strips.

Not that my Subaru hasn't been the epitome of sturdiness and reliability. It has, in fact, been all you could ask for in a utilitarian vehicle, offering reasonably decent gas mileage (22-24 or so mpg in the stop-start city, 28-30 mpg on the open road). But I find myself wanting a bit more luxury and glamor at this point in my life, something a wee more stylish and devil-may-care--without necessarily requiring me to sell my soul to the devil to make the monthly payments. Something that states (but doesn't scream) that I've worked hard, I've "arrived," and I deserve to treat myself well by driving a nice car.

Oh, and I should look good driving it, of course.

* * *

Which, once I put it in writing, sounds not merely ridiculous but downright embarrassingly pathetic. I have, after all, tried somewhat not to be defined by consumer goods and labels (although a good sale at Filene's Basement is a joy indeed). I rarely rush out to buy the latest gadget, toy, or fashion. For instance, I've only this past winter joined the iPod generation, despite it seemingly being designed for me and my so-called lifestyle, that is, I am one who is more than willing to spend $0.99 every few hours on some obscure digital download and carry it with me wherever I go to provide a soundtrack to my so-called lifestyle.

So letting myself be enticed by a car (of all things) to help me validate my sense of aesthetics and self-worth . . . ugh. Please. Why don't I just bend over now and let Butch Capitalism and Master Commerce have their way with me?

What happened to your hopes and dreams, Middle-Aged Man? You were gonna change the world, oh Big Chilled One!

But, you know? So be it. I'm 46 after all; perhaps I could at this point worry a little less about what others think of me. Maybe even I could worry less about what I think of me. Although both sea changes are somewhat akin to asking Oprah to shut up, Lindsey Lohan to go cold turkey when it comes to garnering attention (god forbid it should happen with alcohol and drugs), and Madonna to forgo sucking the blood of our youth and wearing another Living Playtex bra and girdle set straight from the 1973 Montgomery Ward catalog in her next video.

If only it were that simple, just a wave of a psychic wand, and poof! I would have no more worries over bad hair dye jobs or my average and not unpleasant but not necessarily perfect physique and facade. Another wave and poof! Maybe I'd even stop keening over my lack of knowledge on most things in life or my inability to make more time to write and create. Poof! And perhaps I'd even relax enough to buy a Mini Cooper with a sunroof, satellite radio, British racing green in color, and an automatic transmission--because that's what I know how to drive after all--instead of feeling inappropriately prodded and poked by some automobile advice columnist who admonishes me that if I were a serious driver, I would have to have the stick shift, 162 horsepower, and a bucketload of torque (whatever that is), and nothing less.

Because I'm a guy, and I apparently need lots of sheer, raw, internally combustible power to be happy. Even if this guy has always been more about the undulating intangibles, the color and the comfort, and the soft aesthetic pleasures in life. I don't mean that my car has to be something pink and frilly like Penelope Pitstop's preferred mode of transportation in the Wacky Races. It should, however, offer me a rosy outlook on life whenever I sit behind the wheel.

But there's no magic wand--if there were, I might opt for a vintage Citroën that I saw recently in Carlisle, my cousin's 75th anniversary MGB softly rusting in his garage in North Carolina, or a Mini Cooper with a little more trunk space--but not the oversized Mini Clubman, thanks all the same.

Still, maybe just maybe I need to start worrying less and learn to love the Hiroshima mon amour in my head. Just buy the damn car and be happy with life's simple (albeit $20k) pleasures already. It--my maturity, my happiness, my consciousness, my life, my car payments--needs to start sometime.

And a Mini Cooper with me behind the wheel--and no pink detailing in sight--sounds like a good start indeed. Vroom!