Whilst driving to work today, I was struck by an interesting phenomenon I had heretofore been ignorant to: the allure of the paid-off car. Last month, Wes and I mailed in our last payment for our trusty Kia car who goes by the name of Kermit. Wes bought the car in 2003, we paid it off five years later, and we ended up paying roughly twice as much as the original price of the car (curse you, interest!) but it’s done. Finito. We have the title, and the car is officially ours.

Before we owned the car outright, he (the car) bore the brunt of many snippy asides, jabs, and jokes at his expense. After all, he is a Kia, and Kia makes their cars with the intention that none of them should make it to 100,000 miles.

Kermit has trouble climbing hills, his doors won’t stay open and love to slam on you when your arms are full of stuff, and he won’t go over 70 mph without his side mirrors making a strange whistling sound that you can hear inside the car. The windows no longer seal the way they should, the little plastic doohickies in the trunk have all fallen off and been lost, and the backseat is not so much a backseat as it is a miniature impersonation of what a Korean car manufacturer thinks a backseat could be like for midgets.

Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that, when I crashed my car going a whopping 3 mph, my car was very nearly totalled (though in the interest of fairness to my completely uncaring {due to being inanimate and all} car, he did drive all the way home from Seattle with a cracked radiator after that accident, which I appreciate, because Seattle is not a good place to wait around for a tow truck).

In short, Kermit is very mockable. What doesn’t help it that his windshield is cracked clear from one side to the other because someone (not me) decided scraping ice was for the weak and turned the defroster up to high heat after the windshield had been sitting in freezing conditions for over a week.

All this to say, his storied history with us notwithstanding, he’s paid for in full and, as such, we don’t mind him as much. Knowing that we have to pay exactly $0 every month for the pleasure of driving him around makes both of us feel downright rosy toward our little Korean combustible.

Isn’t that an interesting phenomenon? It’s like that couch that you love desperately even though it’s stained, frayed, uncomfortable, and has given you a bad back but you adore it anyway because it’s free and the story of how you got it is mildly amusing.

This is not to say that we won’t be sad to see Kermit go, though. No, in the future when we buy our next car with cold, hard cash we probably won’t even shed a tear for poor old Kermit. Really, at over 70,000 miles, he’s like that old Eskimo that you put on an iceberg and float off into the sunset. He’s served his purpose, and well, but it’s time for him to go float to Russia so that he can find his true calling as a docent at the Kremlin.

Guess who’s back from his reconstructive surgery stay! Kermit, my trusty Kia car, is back from the autobody shop and he looks spiffing. His front end is shiny, black, and decidedly un-smashed. It’s funny, though, because now the rest of him looks a lot less shiny by comparison and he’s kinda the automotive equivalent of the mullet: he’s polished up front but a party in the back.

Wes and I returned the rental car together (we have both come to the decision that we’re not Dodge fans. Also, I’m eternally grateful that I didn’t wreck the rental) and I had a terrific shock when I recognized the sales manager helping us out at the rental place.

His face looked really familiar but I couldn’t quite come up with his name. I mentioned this to Wes while the guy was on the phone and Wes recommended that I look at the business cards to see if I recognized a name. I did.

The moment my eyes flicked over his name I knew exactly who he was: I’d interviewed him for a job when I was a recruiter. We didn’t hire him based on the results of his interview with me. It was weird, the moment I read his name I remembered where he went to school, what his GPA was, and every impression I had of him from his interview.

It was…odd. He didn’t seem like he recognized me, and I wasn’t about to remind him that I’d interviewed him a year ago and decided not to hire him, so we escaped the situation without any awkwardness. Regardless, it was a very strange position to be in.

When you interview someone, it’s a whole different ball of wax from when you’re the one getting interviewed. I always tried to establish rapport with the people I interviewed, and not be a total jerk about the situation, but you can’t escape the fact that your opinion decides whether or not this person gets the job. This fact permeates the whole interview, and your conversation can never seem to escape that reality.

For my part, I’m just glad the guy either doesn’t have a freak memory like I do or doesn’t hold a grudge. Besides, if he had gotten the job he would have had to work with one of the worst bosses of all time. Believe me, he lucked out.

Surprisingly, a lot of good things have come about in the aftermath of what I’m calling The Great Crash of Yesterday. I’m reading and hearing about a ton of other people’s car accident stories, which makes me feel infinitely better, and I’m coming to terms with the idea that crashing my car does not make me stupid, it just makes me human.

One of my favorite phone calls was from my Dad, who called last night to make sure I was OK (it occurred to me that a good daughter would probably have called her parents to tell them about what happened and not just blogged about and assumed they’d read, but I digress.) To be honest, once he ascertained that I was OK he did spend an inordinate amount of time laughing with me. That was really the turn-around moment for me. It’s hard to beat yourself up for crashing your car when your Dad is laughing about it with you.

The rental company has supplied me with a 2008 Dodge Caliber to drive around for awhile and I’m doing my best not to get confused by all the features (there are buttons on my steering wheel that I’m hoping won’t eject me the moment I press them.) The car is fine but it’s huge compared to Kermit and I’m having a really hard time pulling it into the garage. Wes had to re-park it for me because I can’t quite figure out where I am in the car and I’m terrified of running the brand-new rental car into the side of my garage.

Other than rental-car paranoia and the suspicious lack of Kia in our garage, life is dandy. I’m feeling no ill effects from my 2mph collision and am optimistic that the future will be less smash-y. I do worry that I haven’t heard an estimate from the auto-body place. I wonder if they took a look at my car, totalled up how much it would cost to repair it, and decided the repairs would cost more than the car is worth and just decided to push it into a lake and claim it was stolen.

I promise I won’t blog about The Great Crash of Yesterday tomorrow, mainly because the name of the crash will be different and I’m pretty sure I’ve milked this life event to the last drops. If you’re unfulfilled and aching for hilarity, I highly encourage you to watch this video and join me in cruel, delightful laughter.