MY FIRST CAR

At an auction late one afternoon in August, I assume ownership of what I think is
an awesome automobile. At first, it appears to only have an ailing air
conditioning system. After replacing a lot of A/C parts, the accelerator pump begins acting            abnormally by not accurately assigning the amount of acceleration needed. The

balance in the braking system is off, making stops below par. The car bounces when I
bear down on the brake pedal, which

could lead to a collision on the causeway, causing my car to become a crushed
catastrophe. My

Dad decides to dedicate all of today to doctor-up my driving dilemma. He disassembles  the
dashboard and discovers the devices causing the death-rattle when the engine  decelerates.           The hood does not

enable the driver to see the engine nor the emission controls from inside the vehicle,
which would have ensured that Dad could evaluate the problems easier. My

father shifts into fifth gear by fidgeting with my four-stroke, fuel injected, four-cylinder
engine for a fifteenth time. I still can’t figure out what the

gauges on the dash panel mean. I grovel before the gizmos, gadgets and gaskets that
gangle across the ground. He gets a gantry from the garage to

hoist the horsepower out of the hull of the vehicle. He wants to overhaul it, generate more
horses. I hypothesize that my hard-headed father is

ignoring the original issues of stopping and going as he disconnects the idiot-lights on my
in-dash instrument panel because he wants to increase the indicated horsepower. I
feel my car is becoming

jerry-rigged because Dad’s jacking up the front-end, generating a real job for himself.
Jerking out the engine will justify the future judder that jolts while joy riding. The

key to understanding this conundrum is to know that my father wants to kick the car up a
notch so it can get to 100 kilometers quickly even though it is a

labor intensive job. Later, he leaves a litany of Leggo-like parts all over the lawn. What

makes matters even more morose is that he manages to maintain this methodical mess in
a mechanic’s toolbox under the mango tree.

Nevertheless, he knows he’d never neglect a nuisance like this novel piece of junk. The
part that

operates the odometer is obsolete so he figures out that the car can now only operate in
overdrive, otherwise it would stall out.

Peculiar as it may seem, the parking brake pawl is perpendicular to the position of park,
posing another problem to perceive. The

quietness of the exhaust is quaint, never quarrelsome, but

really not race-worthy. So Dad reluctantly relies on a resonator to resolve the problem.
Also, he randomly reasons that the relay for the radio is wrong, which causes a

short in the power supply sooner then he suspects, so he selectively searches the entire
system for something else. He

takes time to think about the torque coming from the transmission, transverses the drive
shaft, which totally takes up the rest of the day.

Usually, my Uncle Udell underestimates the usefulness of many parts in the
undercarriage, ultimately undoing the parts underneath, but today it’s up to Dad. The

vacuum leak causes the exhaust to make VROOM-VROOM sounds, which vexes our
valiant mechanic. Not to mention the vibrations it creates. Its volume makes the

windshield wipers wobble so badly they won’t wipe the windshield washer water off.
The exterior of this car isn’t too bad, except for the

X-shaped scratches on the trunk. The interior has many extras such as XM radio, but
even it, on occasion, makes extremely loud buzzing.

Yellow is not my favorite color for this year car, but it’s better than rust. The steering yoke
is very loose, but Dad says it’s still safe despite its yielding. This car really turned out to be a

zero since it no longer has any zip or zoom. Even if it was painted with zany zebra stripes
and  came with a zillion air fresheners, I still couldn’t get zilch if it sold. Amazing!

Bio:

Laura McDermott, a true native of South Florida, studied creative writing at FSU and received her MFA from FIU while concentrating on poetry in her studies. Currently, Laura is a full time instructor on temporary status at Broward College – South Campus, as well as a part-time instructor at Florida International University and Johnson and Wales University.  For the past five years, she’s served as the Festival Coordinator of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival.  Because of her dedication to higher education and writing, Laura received recognition as a 2008 Conference on College Composition and Communication Professional Equity Project Grant Recipient.