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Old 05-31-2013, 01:06 AM   #1
williebean13
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An Elegy to an Eclipse

Elegy to an Eclipse
(A narrative essay that gives a tribute to our family car, the Mitsubishi Eclipse.)

On a cold, winter day in August 2006, I tagged along with my parents to the Mitsubishi dealership on Capitol Expressway in our white BMW 5-series. We were going to scope out a good deal on a used, red 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse. We were trading in the Beamer because my mother thought it was too big. The salesman, reeking with cologne, as they usually do, lied to us, as they usually do, to trade in the BMW for less money. He claimed that the engine warning light was on, which it wasn’t. We also asked for the CarFax for the Eclipse. CarFax said it was never previously in an accident. We later found out through our mechanic that because of the doors not aligning perfectly, the car’s previous owner must have crashed it. Negotiations seemed to take a year went by before we actually bought the car; however, we bought the Eclipse anyway, and what a good decision that was, or was it? I should’ve been happy to accept a new car into the family, but I was so mad at what we’d been through, I couldn’t wait to get rid of the Eclipse.
Despite my wishes, the Eclipse became part of our daily lives. The Eclipse came with sports tires, so its new proud owner, my dad, put his macho instincts to the test. So on his way home from work, my dad drove as fast as he could down Bailey Road, an extremely windy and perilous roadway. He drove so rambunctiously that he got himself nauseous even though he was the driver of the car! Thank goodness I wasn’t there given my susceptibility to motion sickness.
He then, being a man, wanted to customize his new ride. So he headed to the shop and gave the windows what he thought was a light tint; however, it turned out to be dreadfully dark. Since the combination of an Eclipse with tinted windows screamed at the cops that its owner must be a young intellectual who wears his pants with his undergarments showing below his shirt line, my father got pulled over multiple times, including an incident in which my Caucasian father agreed to take his Indian friend’s son home from gymnastics practice.
The police officer then asked my father if that was his son. My dad then replied no, it was his friend’s child. The policeman then had no idea what to say after that, recorded his license plate number, and then let them go. I know that policeman will never look at an Eclipse again without thinking of that story.
Sometimes, however, my father did deserve to be pulled over in that red-headed orphan. Three times he was charged with minor traffic offenses. It was pouring rain outside, and the Eclipse recently received some new tires. My father and I were running late for work, and the driver got a little greedy with the acceleration pedal. As we raced down a hill on Camden Avenue, out of nowhere, a uniformed policeman ran out into the middle of the street! He forcefully signaled us over and asked a series of questions. My dad asked me to say hello to the police officer so that he would take mercy on us. However, the policeman was not completely fooled by my politeness and still gave us a ticket. My gentility did achieve something though. It lessened the fine by a hundred bucks. Those new tires were more expensive than we originally thought.
Oddly, with a twist of logic, my father then decided that the Eclipse was not fast enough. To solve this problem, my father acquired a speed chip. It tells all of the computers in the engine that limit the speed of the car to shut down. This improves fuel efficiency because the engine doesn’t have to work as hard as usual to get up to speed. It also makes the car faster because there are no limiters controlling the speed. Unfortunately, the diagram to install the chip is too confusing to anybody who doesn’t have a Ph.D. so it sits unused and collecting dust in our garage.
Fortunately, during the course of all of these episodes, the car had been slowly falling apart. Now the Eclipse has passed middle age. Its left tail light has been cracked from the endless hours of the sun beating down on it; consequently, it filled with water from the downpours from the brutal winters. I thought to put a fake fish inside of it and make the tail light into an aquarium. The fact that the light still worked temporarily, amazed me. However, before I had a chance to implement this plan, the bulb burnt out and needed to be replaced, which it has been.
Furthermore, its chipped paint makes it look like the car has vitiligo. It also became steaming hot for the passengers. The 2,382 mile round trip to Seattle from Morgan Hill, California burnt out its air conditioning and has worn it down severely. We were on the way to visit with friends, my uncle, and my grandparents. During the trip, boundless climbs turned suddenly and dropped for miles and miles and we passed what seemed like endless Subway sandwich shops and fields of crops. The small isolated cities in the middle of nowhere raised the temperature up to 105 degrees. The pit stops for sleep, drinks, and food amassed a pile of water bottles, wrappers, boxes, and paper bags to fill in the passenger’s floorboard. Somehow, they have managed to exist to this day.
The car is now battered, dirty, bruised, and dying. We’ve now had the car for so long that if you look closely, you’ll see small handprints inside the windows from when I was only a chaste juvenile.
These days, we are visiting car dealerships again. But now that I am much older and wiser, I can see the truth. I have been a backstabber and have been for years. Even when I traded in the old, white BMW I was being a traitor. I cannot believe that after all that the Eclipse has done for us, I wanted to kill it. Trading the car won’t only be getting rid of a car, but will get rid of a part of our family. We were given the difficult opportunity to choose what commuter vehicle we could own and use every day. Did we make the best decision? Today, after all of what we have been through, not even a million-dollar car with a thousand horsepower engine could have been a more loyal member of our family than the Mitsubishi.
Sadly, we have not come up with an original name for our car besides The Eclipse. I’ve been thinking about whether that is the right name for it. I know it was intended to represent a lunar or solar eclipse, a dark spot amongst the bright. To us though, it is a bright spot emerging from the dark and will forever be remembered simply as The Eclipse.
.
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Old 05-31-2013, 12:32 PM   #2
jamesslcx
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Re: An Elegy to an Eclipse

Good story, very interesting.
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