It’s Time For Me To Atone For All The Terrible Car Things I Did This Past Year

As you may be aware, tomorrow is the second of the two High Holy Days in Judaism: Yom Kippur. This is a somber holiday, the Day of Atonement, where we’re supposed to reflect back over the past year and think about all the crappy things we did or said or somehow otherwise let people or ourselves down. But it’s not enough to just reflect; real atonement requires directly confronting what you’ve done and seeking forgiveness from those you may have wronged! As you can imagine, my list is as long and imposing as a CVS receipt, so I have a lot of atoning to do. And that includes automotive-related atoning as well, to carmakers, PR people, cars themselves, and, yes, you dear readers. So I may as well get to it.

I’ll also be fasting in observance of the holiday tomorrow, so fair warning to anyone whom I may encounter in the late afternoon tomorrow: I’ll likely see you as a giant chicken leg or hot dog, so I’d advise keeping your distance.

I’m going to list my perceived automotive sins here, in no particular order, but starting with whom or what I’ve wronged. Let’s see how this goes.

To my Pao:

I apologize for not changing your transmission oil as soon as I got you back in 2018. I think getting a new transmission installed counts as atonement, so I’m going to say we’re square.

To Automaker PR people I’ve emailed:

I apologize for asking so many stupid questions that make you have to research things to settle my own petty grudges, even if I have no actual regrets about that. Also, pass on my apologies to your archive people whom I ask questions that they know no rational human cares about.

To automaker PR people I’ve interacted with in person:

I apologize for not leaving you in peace during meals, for continually shifting the conversation away from the things you’re being paid to actually talk about, and for seizing your upper arm with an unsettling fierce intensity and locking eyes with you, uncomfortably, as I ramble and ask questions you have no hope of answering. Also, I should apologize especially to the PR person whom I made so angry that they yelled at me, loudly and publicly, from the seat of a vintage racing car.

To everyone who has asked me for car-buying advice:

I apologize for not warning you what a colossal idiot I am and how deep and crippling my automotive fetishes are. Under no circumstances should anyone have believed me when I insisted that a classic rear-engined Skoda was “as rational a purchase as any modern Toyota” or when I said that “if you need more than 45 horsepower in your daily driver, your problems are emotional, and you should seek the counsel of a clergyperson,” or even when I insisted that a friend should buy a new Pontiac, knowing full well the brand no longer existed, just so I could send her the Ride, Pontiac Ride video every morning at 6 a.m.:

To the American Dental Association:

I apologize for drunkenly interrupting your annual State of America’s Mouths conference at their headquarters in Chicago’s Near North and Streeterville neighborhoods, for shoving my way on stage and issuing a rambling, profanity-laced 12-minute diatribe complete with very off-color jokes about bicuspids to the shocked and dismayed crowd, and then for exposing myself and urinating on the buffet, and finally for attempting to bite off the pinky of ADA president Dr. Brett Kessler before ADA goons finally tackled and restrained me.

While I believe my fundamental issues with the organization are valid, my behavior was indefensible, and I sincerely apologize. I’ll try not to let an incident like this happen for a third time.

To the Genesis press car I had months ago:

I should have written a review about you. I genuinely enjoyed my time with you, and I regret what you may have witnessed me doing inside you with your driver-facing camera and my use of the massage seat. No one, non-sentient machine or not, should be subjected to that manner of indignity.

To the car UX designer I met, who was defending opening a glove box from an icon in a menu on a touch screen:

I should not have struck you with my fish taco. That’s unacceptable. You were well within your rights to break that bottle of Pabst over my head.

To the concept of paddle shifters on mainstream automatic transmission commuter cars:

Sorry, I still think you’re kinda stupid. I’m sorry that no one uses you after the first month or so of ownership.

To Matt, our publisher:

I’m sorry I called you a miserable beady-eyed clamfucking brittle-boned scarecrow with the insight of a crack-addled womp rat under my breath at the last meeting we had, where you reminded me I was behind on member drawings. That was uncalled for. Your bones aren’t brittle.

To David, my co-founder:

I’m sorry I made up a fake ’90s quasi-religious TV series about a frat house that had a jive-talking angel as a brother they had to keep secret called “Frateternity” and made up numerous ridiculous episodes so that you would bring it up as a reference in an article and then we’d all laugh at you in a staff meeting. That was cruel, and definitely not the kind of thing Brother Gabriel would have been part of over at the Gamma Omega Delta house.

To all of you, my dear readers:

I’m just sorry for what I put you through, day after day, but thankful for your remarkable patience. And for all the typos and occasional factual errors.

To anyone who took my advice about using brake fluid as a healthier cooking oil alternative:

Our lawyers have forbidden me to officially apologize for this, but unofficially, just know I regret everything that happened as a result. I swear I thought it was brake fluid when I was testing it with my step-grand-accountant’s fajita recipe, but I think it was just actually 20W-50.

Okay, that’s probably enough for now. To keep this efficient, I’ve automated the atonement process with a sophisticated device known as the Atonelator 2000:

Top photo: Skoda

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