Going Nuclear, or, Shopping with my mom

In which our Hero remembers regaining consciousness after his emergency wisdom tooth extraction when his mother brought him home and handed him back the credit card he didn’t remember giving her in the first place

Starting at the end of the story, I take possession of my car on Thursday. It’s used, but it’s also a 2011, so it’s a little exciting because this is the newest car I’ve ever bought. Also, this time it’s in my name, so I have my first official asset.

And I shall name her, despite Nocturne’s inevitable reaction when she discovers this fact, A Confluence of Grudging Pragmatism. Pragma, for short, which is a good joke for an old C programmer. If I ever mention to anybody that my car has a name. Besides you, Gentle Reader.

Starting at the beginning of the story, I bought my first car in 1997. Searched the classified section of the newspaper till I found a target that met my criteria (the model I wanted at a dealership that didn’t sell them), negotiated the deal, paid for it. Except that for reasons I can’t really duplicate, we decided it made sense for me to throw my car under my dad’s name. I think it was just a matter of saving time, and honestly, I didn’t give a crap about the paperwork. It was my beautiful blue grampa-car baby.

(Since then I’ve had plenty of cause to regret that choice because while it didn’t matter in my family, it *did* matter when I was looking at my assets and discovering I had none that I could prove in a court of law. Whee.)

She was 6 when I got her, and the next 14 years were a roller-coaster ride of long distance cruises into the US and Canada, commutes to client sites, and tows when she flaked out on me. Disconnected the AC when I discovered (the hard way) that this model could jam the transmission with an AC failure. Don’t need AC. Do need transmission. Eventually replaced the transmission, another problem with the family line there. But for the most part, she was good to me, and much loved.

But then she hit that threshold point where I was looking at some massive repairs in a 20-year-old car and I decided, nope. I’m done. I will retire my lady because she’s undrivable without the fix (despite driving it to the shop, because the brakes were just 99% failed, not 100%. Shhh!)

And that was two years ago. Two long lonely years, borrowing my parent’s van, renting when I could plan ahead, and staying home a lot more than just the company of my lovely girlfriend would explain. There are friend’s kids I haven’t ever met, and birthdays and anniversaries I haven’t gone too because of the funk and irritation at having to go rent and return and get there and get back and fuel and cetera.

So this summer I started researching, and shopping. I admit I set myself a deadline of August, but I haven’t been able to find the kind of enthusiasm that I’d felt for my boat. Cars are small now, the “full size” now would have been a midsize rental not even five years ago. And adjusting my perspective to that has been challenging. And the design stylings of so many brands of late has left me with my choice of formless windswept pizzadough blob. A honda looks like a toyota looks like a buick looks like a ford looks like a— Hello, who are you?

And in the last month or so, I finally decided that I’m going to be renting a bunch with my plans for the next few months, so why not finish buying a car so I can at least make longer use of that money. But I haven’t had time to take a test drive. Until today.

Starting at the beginning of today’s story, my parents picked me up from work and came with me for the test drive. I hate to say it this way, but I actually really needed them for weights so I could load up the car and see how it handles.

Took the car out, it was pleasantly capable, better looking than I expected on the inside, and comfortable. It’s got enough oomph for the highway, especially since there’s normally one of me and not a full car. It’s fancier than I need it to be, but that’s a small treat for my ego.

And then came the buying part of the process. Negotiating for a car.

I enjoy haggling, but what I need to be successful is a sense of the value of a thing, and unfortunately, all of my research says that the price they put on the car is actually better than I could have expected to get. Certainly priced to beat all of the other available cars, similarly equipped. So basically, my internal reckoning says that it’s going to be *hard* to get them to budge on price.

The salesman shows me the price. And I ask him why the price he just gave me which is vehicle plus tax is 1500 more than the price in the listing plus tax. He goes and discovers they made a mistake and “fixes” it for me.

Then my mother asks for 3000 off the price. I don’t drop my jaw despite the fact that there’s no evidence to support this kind of bid. They can’t be in that big a hurry to sell, not yet, it doesn’t make sense. The salesman won’t even entertain that offer, but my mother insists, and they go back and forth.

And then my father asks for 700 off the price. Salesman says, you give me your credit card for a deposit and I’ll go ask. I give him the card. He comes back with a No. But not with my card.

I take a shot, with a technique that’s worked for me before. Take off $501. Enough to change the thousands so I can tell my friends I won the negotiation. He says he can’t do that. But $400 less, if we make the offer, he’ll take that in. We balk. I get up to get my card.

And this is where the sonic wave hits, the leading edge of the explosion so far away it hasn’t even registered yet. The salesman is giving my back my credit card. And my *mother* grabs it, and refuses to give it to me, and gets up, trailing my dad, the salesman and me, to talk to the sales manager.

My mom is a tiny woman. Five four but looking smaller, bent a little by her age. She’s getting a little hard of hearing in one of her ears. And English is not her first language. To the point that frequently, she’ll have parts of different conversations because she hasn’t properly heard what people are talking about. And that’s when she’s doing it by accident.

The shockwave of the explosion hits now. And it is *devastating*

“You know he doesn’t smile? He’s so serious” she says about our salesman. The guy on the other side of the desk starts laughing so hard I worry he’s going to hurt himself. The sales manager starts by thinking she’s complaining and not teasing, and the salesman is trying to defend himself.

“I just need him to give me 300 more and we can go, don’t you want my son to buy your car?” she asks the sales manager. And as they digest this, she adds, “I cook for him, you know.”

The guy at the other desk is hunched over laughing. We all laugh, because none of us have a clue what this has to do with the car. “You should give me the 300 more because I cook for him,” she elaborates.

I’m trying to speak and have no idea what to say. The sales manager says they should split it, 150 each. My mom says “No, at least 200!” And that’s when he does the math and realizes that my mom’s bamboozled him because the offer is still at the number that was 700 from their price and no deal. He sends us back to the salesman’s desk.

My mom makes some other comment and the salesman starts laughing again.

“Oh, you *DO* smile!” and now he’s laughing with a little amusement and a little embarrassment like he can’t help himself and I’m amazed as I recognize that laugh from all the kids she’s been pulling that trick with since I was the one she’d be warning “Don’t smile! You better not smile!”

The negotiation continues like that. And then we get up again, to get my credit card. We’re 200 apart.

And my mom suddenly has it again. And she’s telling the sales manager that it’s just 200 dollars and the car is so much, they can afford it. And that I had to take the afternoon off to come there so he should give me the 200 dollars. I think the guy at the other desk really did hurt himself when he laughed that time.

And it goes on like that. My mom and the sales manager haggling. “You’re going to go home without a car for 200 dollars?” “You’re going to let him walk away for 200 dollars?”

I ask my mother for my credit card so we can go home before traffic. I figure they’ll either stop us or I’ll get a car that isn’t so indulgent. She refuses to give it to me, again. Just keeps arguing with the Sales Manager.

And in the middle of them still going at it, with no change in the tone, the Sales Manager takes the paperwork writes a number splitting the 200 between us, and suddenly I seem to have a deal. And my credit card back.

I’m not sure where the irony is in this story. Maybe it’s that my mom was the one who refused to give up on the haggling, after spending the last year telling me not to buy yet, not to buy.

Or it’s that once again my mother has exploded into my car buying. When I was negotiating the boat, they balked at my offer because they thought they had a better one. Which turned out to be my mother trying to negotiate by phone because she was curious if I was getting a good price.

I did beat her, negotiating on the boat. But there, we both knew there was opportunity. Here, she was squeezing what I thought was a stone.

I guess she’s still cooking for me.