My car has a long history of bad behavior. Mechanically, J (that’s his name) is a mess. I have had the transmission go out on the freeway (no fun at 70 mph). The power booster went bad on the freeway too. I don’t know what its function is but I can tell you that every time I slowed down the car stalled. Considering I was in traffic on the 5, it happened a lot. J also died, for inexplicable reasons, on the 405 while heading to San Diego, which resulted in a $200 tow back to San Pedro. I have since invested in the AAA Plus membership. It’s well worth it in my book. Recently I had the pleasure of having my front wheel snap off of the axle. The sound of that makes you think that the bottom of your car dropped out. I actually looked down to see if my car resembled the Flintstones’ before I realized what it was. His most recent mechanical problem involves the heating coil, so the noise coming from the center console sounds like someone is doing bong hits. The last trip to the mechanic resulted in a $2000 estimate. That is $1500 more than what his blue book value is. So sad. He has now decided that electrical problems are fun too. The most common is the check engine light, which I have learned to ignore. I have had the engine checked. It’s bad. I got the message, thanks. The radio also has a mind of its own and when it feels like it, it doesn’t work. Last Tuesday my alarm decided that my radio shouldn’t have all the fun. I tried to set it before going to class, no dice. It has done this in the past and will usually reset itself after a few hours. So when I got out of class I pushed the button to unlock the car and nothing. I pushed it a few times thinking I just might still be too far away but it had not fixed itself. So I manually unlocked the door and started the car. This set off the ticking. Really loud, really embarrassing ticking. Laura was there to witness J’s shenanigans and she just laughed. So I dropped her off and was barely two blocks from school when the alarm started sounding while I was moving. Oh the shame! I pushed the button and that stopped the beeping and the ticking resumed. I called Laura to tell her. She laughed again. It started sounding again as I was stopped at a light on Ocean. Unfortunately, I was stopped next to a cop. He rolled down his window and asked if everything was okay. Red faced, I told him I had a wiring problem but it would be alright. It sounded once more as I was crossing the Vincent Thomas Bridge. By this time there was a lot of cussing. Oh I forgot to mention that my windows are wired to my alarm. I can roll down my windows with the remote and they roll up when I set the alarm. Ordinarily this is helpful because (surprise, surprise) the A/C does not work. I paid $600 to have the condenser replaced but the crook mechanic only polished up my bad one and put it back in. A month later he closed down shop and moved back to Croatia. Anyway, my whole drive home Tuesday night the windows would roll up without warning. That may not sound bad in comparison but half the time my arm was resting in the window frame. The alarm behaved for a few days but last night it went off again while I was driving. J is old (13) and he has a lot of miles (nearly 180,000). I give him a lot of credit, but honestly this shit has got to stop.