The birth of a hypocardriac

While riding in the car with my friend Sarah to get coffee the other day, she cocked her head to the side, wrinkled her brow, and if it were actually possible to see her ear strain, it might even have quivered with exertion. "Do you hear that?...I think my car is like...vibrating more than normal or something?" And so it was coined: Hypocardria. The obsessive, nit-picking, irrational sensitivity we all harbor towards our vehicles.

You all know what I'm talking about. The: I-feel-like-it's-pulling-a-little-to-the-left-(Haha, that's what she said)-weird-clunking-do-you-smell-burning?-do-you-hear-rattling-on-your-side? kind of supersonic perception humans develop when riding in their very own heap of $10,000 + metal. Mysteriously, 99% of the time, only the owner of the said heap of metal notices any of these non-existent maladies.

My dad, and rightful owner of my car, runs out and whips open the door when I go home before even giving me a hug. He turns the key and cocks his ear to the wind like a hungry desert lion listening in for its next meal. Please note, this man was exempt from going to war in Vietnam because he is partially deaf in BOTH ears. There is an audible intake of breath as he listens for the phantom rumbles that convince him I have abusing his real child while driving it around. Step away from the Trailblazer dad.

Then, comes the inevitable "walk-around" check of the car. He finds the fleck of paint from where someone opened their door and hit my car ("You haven't been parking in the furthest spot!") and smudge on my bumper from where someone tapped me getting out of a tight parallel spot. He grows increasingly red-faced, and strangely even my reminders that the first day he bought the car he accidentally mowed it down with the snow-blower and send it in for thousands of dollars of repair, do not assuage his fury. Hypocardria exhibit A.

Inevitably, I succumb to this strange psychological disease last week. While driving to the gym in the morning, I was convinced my car was literally leaning to the left like the leaning tower of fucking Pisa (clearly I had not really thought this through). I frantically parked, ran around my car and checked my tires. Alas, all was well with the Blazer. Unfortunately, there I stood, freezing my ass off in a random parking lot at 7 am staring at my perfectly fine car. Hypocardria exhibit B.