On Engine LIghts - 11/19/08

"This little light of mine...I'm gonna let it shine...” This was a song I learned in Sunday school as a girl. It was a comforting song. It got me thinking of all the times that a light can be reassuring. Lights on the runway will guide a plane to a safe landing. To a small child, a nightlight is the difference between a good night's sleep and a night spent with one eye on the closet door. Motel 6 has the homey tagline "We'll leave the light on for you...” And survivors of near-death experiences say that a warm, white light is waiting for us all. So you can see how soothing just one small light can be.

Unless, of course, it's the engine light on my dashboard.

Upon seeing the engine light, most normal humans would think, "Okay, time for a tune-up". Being a glass-is-half-empty kind of girl, I see the engine light as the first step in a series of cataclysmic events: Expensive repair = bankruptcy = foreclosure = living in a cardboard box. This is the same type of jump I made when an eye doctor told me she saw "something" in the back of my son's eyeball. To me "something" = mass = tumor = cancer = the unthinkable. (FYI, it was scar tissue, completely harmless.)

This particular engine light and I have a history. Last summer, it came on without warning. I took the car to my friends at Sullivan Tire, and after some brief diagnostics they suggested replacing the gas cap. This was a relatively inexpensive fix, and a common culprit in emission-related warning lights. The fix was made, the light was re-set and the technician told me that if the light did not come back on within my normal drive cycle (whatever THAT is...) I could assume that the problem was fixed. If, however, the light returned, they would have to do further diagnostics which (direct quote) "can get expensive." I drove for the next few weeks with one eye on the dash and one on the road. Just when I thought I was home free...the light came back on.

Trying to remain calm, keeping visions of moving my family in with my parents at bay, I called my buddies at Sullivan and made an appointment for the upcoming weekend. For the next several days, I drove with that blazing yellow engine light constantly taunting me that I faced potential financial ruin, praying to God for serenity. The day before my scheduled appointment, while waiting in line at the Dunkin' Donuts drive-thru, the light suddenly went off. And stayed off.

My first thought was that God had answered my prayers and fixed my car. That sounds blasphemous, I know. God has many more important prayers to answer than my ailing minivan. And then my friends at Sullivan told me that sometimes the emissions problem corrects itself, and the light shuts off on its own. Still, I couldn't help but wonder if a higher power was involved.

Months have passed with nary a problem, when suddenly last week, the light came back on. A month before Christmas, two weeks before our Thanksgiving pilgrimage to my in-laws, it could not have come at a worse time. But instead of freaking out and spending precious time worrying, I decided to just be a grown-up and soldier on.

Then the light went off again. And that's when it hit me: My car is messing with me.