Trust no one unless you have eaten much salt with him.

Perhaps I should have then, according to Cicero, at any rate, shared today's heavily feta-ed spinach and pasta dish with the people I bought my last car with. The problem is (other than the fact that the feta was eaten today and the car was bought a few months ago) (actually it was eaten, and this post mostly written, more than a month ago, before the, ahem, issues)-- if there is a problem, and I'm not sure that there is -- that I honestly do believe everything people say.

There are two qualifiers: I endeavor not to put myself in circumstances clearly mitigating against an atmosphere of trust, and I am more than capable of rescinding the trust once it is clear it is no longer warranted. For example, to satisfy the first condition, I don't go to car dealers. The second should be obvious: I wouldn't buy the Brooklyn Bridge twice. Even from an old lady. With flowers in her chignon.

The people I bought my newest car from were very nice, though. They lived on a houseboat and I liked their rug. They had some friendly cats, and they told me their names. They also lived close to me, which I admit probably earns them at least a lower branch on the trust tree a priori, in terms of (obviously logically untenable) ingroup/outgroup status. They showed me the new car they were replacing my new one with, and the trade made sense and adduced to their argument - and thus my faith in them.

I asked what was wrong with it, and they said nothing other than the lock on the passenger side needing to be disengaged from the inside. For me, this is not a problem, as any passenger I might have would be far more likely to want to be escaping from the car, rather than attempting to break in to savor my questionable navigational powers. When we took a test drive, the brakes seemed weak, and I overcame my concern over seeming rude with Valid Arguments (to myself) about Reasonable Questions (to them) and therefore asked about this. In retrospect, I less asked than provided my interlocutor an answer proactively by suggesting that it was perhaps simply the contrast of having to stop such a big heavy car as this versus merely imagining a stop in my tiny hatchback and having it come true. I could push my other car to most destinations and not lose much time. It is very small.

He agreed with my suggestion and responded that, yes, that was probably it, and they had had the brakes serviced recently. It was a matter of becoming accustomed to them, which I would, as he had.

I still haven't, though. I still try to leave eight car lengths between me and the car in front. In inclement conditions, which, it being January, are frequent, I try to double that when possible. And today, at the garage, my oil change mechanic confirmed my initial impression that there might be something wrong with them. What, he suggested, was largely wrong was that there weren't any. Stopping being one of the three things I most look for in a car, I am forced to get them fixed.

I do feel sad, though. Not just that the seller patently lied, but also that I was truly that dumb, or imperceptive. However, in my defense, there were no odd noises. The car is nearly silent, most particularly when compared to the other one, which is made of paper. Additionally, the last oil changer (at a chain oil-changing place), failed to notice anything, despite their 1200-point Vehicle Inspection. (He did, of course, notice all manner of irrelevant things he'd be happy to replace, after which overhaul I would have spent enough money to have bought a third car and a Vespa.)

I loathe putting money into cars, however. I don't mind tires and oil changes. Spark plugs make sense, too, as does keeping one's muffler from dragging on the ground. But there is a limit, and all I want is a little (or large) box that starts and goes and stops. And has a heater. Alright, a good heater, with a good fan, the sort that heats up as though there were no water in the radiator and stays there, on high, bringing me bliss and fueling my thermal fantasies from September to May.

I don't mind spending money on a pretty vase, or furniture for the neighbor's cat, or flowers, or wine, or taxis. Imagine life without taxis available when just what you need is precisely a taxi and nothing more: it's a horrid thought. In any language. And it doesn't matter what they cost, because what you need is a taxi -- and here one is! How amazing! Always a blessing.

But I suffer from what amounts to an eternally-inchoate (thank God, because were it ever worked out it would be yet more ludicrous than it already is) conspiracy-sort-of theory regarding certain products and services. One, obviously, is car service and car parts. I don't believe all car service at a garage should be priced at the same rate: some jobs are easy, and some require fine troubleshooting. Turning a couple lug nuts is one thing, but often mechanics must utilize their brains and not just their brawn, resorting to analogies, logic, tricky diagnoses, comparison of all the options - and sometimes mustering a good bedside manner, too, which is not at all necessary when you simply have to relate We topped off the coolant, or The coolant looks fine. I can hold my own hand through that.

This distemper also extends to the purchase of certain products that we have allowed to become necessities. I in no way mean to say I am exempt from this enslavement, but merely that each time I acknowledge it I am more piqued. I live alone, and not in a family of seven; therefore I only seldom need to buy any of these, and I suspect this lack of frequency has prevented me from becoming inured to the injustice.

In this list are garbage bags and lightbulbs. They cost practically nothing, and in the first case I very rarely have need of them, and in the second they last far longer than anything of that price should be expected to. Yet in both cases I am resentful not only that I need them, but that there is nothing else that can be reasonably substituted. I could in theory use bedsheets if I had an unusual quantity of garbage -- but I don't have any old ones nor can I imagine doing so if I did. And candles and television sets have attributes in common with lamps -- but one can't read by the light of a television, and reconfiguring an entire home for candlelight would certainly require a level and amount of effort I could much more sanely and enjoyably direct elsewhere.

The most galling purchases, however, I always note as TP on my list and always end up buying all together, as I can never remember, once I get there, what my discreet notation system was meant to convey this time. I find purchasing any of the three difficult and embarrassing, as each is a stark and irrefutable admission of frailty, and of impending death. Each screams at the clerk and the moribund mortals behind me, in its gaudy or discreet packaging, that however glorious the undying soul may be, for this brief flicker in its eternal existence we are stuck haplessly inside these markedly inglorious fleshbags, urinating, defecating, menstruating, and accumulating gingiva as we variously await, bemoan, or battle the inevitable. And in the meantime, we buy as many products as we can to conceal and combat the true nature of our bodies and of life itself.

None of this would be as excruciating as it is, I suppose, if I were an average grocery-store customer, if my cart were piled high with all manner of distracting items. Food can divert the attention; the reader of my cart could focus on the pleasures of the flesh rather than its inevitable decay as he took note of the artisan breads and local cheeses and pounds of finocchiona and bresaola. But it's no use for me keeping large quantities of food on hand, and I hate bread. Therefore, there is never a cart piled high. There is never, frankly, need for a cart at all. I can always get by with a little basket, and when I muster the courage once again to parade my weakness before my peers, the terseness of the message renders it quite easily read to even the most pressed for time.

I do try to throw a few ringers in: wine, flowers, licorice... Of course, a basket of toilet paper, tampons, toothpaste, wine, flowers, and licorice looks rather egregiously like someone who is not succeeding magnificently in coming to terms with death and its precursors. 'Denial' these days is a far graver sin, we are told, than anything John Calvin or Billy Sunday warned us about. So perhaps directness is preferable. Or at least au courant.

However, as comfortable as I genuinely am with some of my atoms eventually ending up in potting soil, I suspect it is the intentionality that can be read from my purchases that most disturbs me. In other words, I presume that my fellows at the supermarket have come to the conclusion, via analogy to their own lamentable position, that my body engages in all manner of bodily functions just as theirs do, and that mine, like theirs, will one day cease to do any of them, and that I, like them, am in the meantime doing what I can to make the consequences of these functions less unpleasant for others and myself. What I don't enjoy is the declarative aspect of the purchase: it is though I am assertively announcing my intent to evacuate my bowels and rid myself of some spare endometrial bits. I am sharing with strangers information I'd rather keep private, if we can assume that the overwhelming majority of toilet-paper purchases are practical and not based on some kind of wild whim after having heard of this invention and its potential uses in home decorating or weaving or somesuch. I cringe every time I have to carry a pack of SuperQuilty around a store knowing that I have thereby given permission and incentive for everyone who sees me to picture me using it for its intended, sole, horrific purpose.