silver lining

I am afraid of becoming my mother. Through all this work I have been doing, I am starting to realize that, ironically, fear fuels the parts of my personality that resemble my mother’s. I have been trying to think, “If somebody were in a similar situation as me, what would I tell them to do/say?” instead of “What can I do/say that will make nobody dislike me?”. I am intuitive when I am looking from the outside; but when I’m in a new or difficult situation, I go to angry putty or shut down.

My car is in the shop. Still. It has been there for a week now. When I first took it in, it was pretty clear it was a fuel-related problem -- probably the fuel pump -- from work my dad did on it. I told the shop everything we did and found out before they touched the car.

They checked the fuel pressure. When it looked fine, they dismissed that it was fuel-related.  They called me and told me that it was the timing chain and tensioner, and it was going to be $950. I got a phone call two days later, and they had gotten to the point where they could see the timing chain and tensioner….and they were both fine. And the car still wouldn’t run. So they had to put it back together and figure out what was wrong with it.

It is now a full week after dropping off the car, and they called me to tell me it was the fuel pump. They said they missed it before because it is keeping good pressure right until the second before the engine shuts off…which means the fuel pump dies intermittently and shuts the engine off. Then they said it would be $950 to fix it.

There were a few long seconds as I freaked out a little. My parents happened to have their car’s fuel pump fixed at the same shop several times before. Because of that and internet research, I knew this should be a $700 fix. I knew they were charging me for all this extra time to go down the wrong path before fully exploring the fuel system that I had told him was almost definitely the problem. I knew I was going to have to argue with this guy. Past Melissa would’ve gritted her teeth, said okay, called her husband, her husband would’ve said it was a ridiculous price and insisted Melissa talk the price down, then Melissa would’ve gotten mad at said husband for making her do something uncomfortable.  But Current Melissa is less scared of becoming her mother and being embarrassingly mean to store clerks. Current Melissa is realizing that just because there is a disagreement doesn’t mean that there should be yelling. Current Melissa knows that she can ask for something reasonable in a reasonable way and a reasonable store clerk would be happy to try to help.

So I took a breath, and said in my normal conversational voice (though there may have been some trembling at first): “Ummm…I’m a little bit confused. I must be paying for the extra work before you guys figured out if was the fuel pump, because changing a fuel pump should cost less than changing a timing chain in a Sunfire. When I brought it in, I called to tell the story of what happened, and told them that when we sprayed ether into the air intake it would run, but then would stop when you stopped spraying it in. So, if it had been fully verified that it wasn’t the fuel pump before digging into the timing chain, I would be paying considerably less, right? I'm sorry, I just want to make sure I’m getting a fair price.” The guy, who I have dealing with exclusively through this past week, said, “Let me just rerun some numbers here….” One minute later, the quote was a full $200 less. I was expecting to pay $700, so it is still a little bit higher than I would’ve liked, but they had put four new sparkplugs in it, as well and that’ll probably save future money, so I’ll let that slide…..(forgive me my rationalization!).

My point is, I’ve been learning the lesson that I am not my mother. More importantly, I can be a fully functioning adult without doing the things my mom did in public that horrified me. [There don't have to be crying store clerks or children left in my wake!]  Today I got to put it to practice, and I got $200 of positive reinforcement. I am very proud of myself for the progress I've made.