My car is trying to kill me!

Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but I swear my car is trying to kill me.

It started subtly. I bought my car at one of those re-seller places, which I won't name so I don't get sued. This was 2007 and after trying out sitting in about a hundred cars where my right knee banged into the console or my head hit the roof, I came across a big, really big, beautiful American car that was only a 2004, and get this, it only had 4,000 miles on it!

My internal scam detector of course went off. 4K for three years! Something was fishy. An old lady who kept the car in the garage except for when she went to church (once a year on Christmas!), or on the other hand, maybe it was a mafia scumbag who turned the odometer back from 4,000,000?

But there was so much room in the car. (I know, I know, maybe not the best reason to buy a car, but it was like sitting on my living room sofa.)

Ok, I bought it. And in the beginning my car's homicidal tendencies were latent. For a couple of months everything seemed okay. Yeah, I was digging the car. Thinking I'd made the deal of a lifetime. But then little things started going wrong. After a heavy rain, my passenger door filled with water. (I only realized it while driving. When I'd brake it was like a fish bowl was in the car door.) Then my windshield started to leak. Slowly at first, then more, then more. Not quite a fire hose, okay? but it was getting there. (I should've seen the writing on the wall at this point—was my car trying to drown me?)

I fixed those potential flood risks (quite costly) and soldiered on, but clearly my 'garage kept by a church-going old lady' theory was kaput.

Now, it's not my car's fault that it has huge doors. That I'm not arguing. My golfing buddy won't park next to me in the golf course parking lot because he's sure if I open my door even half way, I'll dent his nice Toyota Avalon. And okay, okay, so I can take a little vehicular rejection, but the thing about the big doors is—I'm convinced they are trying to kill me.

How? Every time I open my door and get into the car, the door swings back and crushes my legs. Although the door hasn't broken my legs yet, I'm sure if I had osteoporosis it would have. Nevertheless, my legs are bruised and battered, and okay if the door hasn't killed me, besides making it very difficult to walk eighteen holes, it has weakened me to the point of being vulnerable to my car's most recent attempt at homicide.

I smelled gas. Not a lot at first. In the beginning, I thought it might have been the car in front of mine's exhaust. That sort of thing. But over time it became clear that it was my murderous car's latest try to get rid of me.

Well, you know how the story ends because I'm writing this. And I haven't sold the villainous car. How could I palm it off on someone else? For all practical purposes, I would be committing murder.

So now I keep a very suspicious eye on my car. Now if the car is going down a hill, I'm anticipating brake failure and preparing to eject. I have a fire extinguisher in the back seat for when the engine inevitably catches on fire. Lastly, for when that terrifying 'check engine' light comes on, I have a defibrillator to restore my heartbeat after the massive heart attack I'll surely have.

I honestly hope your car is better than mine (not all cars are evil), but at least now I know for a fact that my car is trying to kill me, and I'm preparing for its next attempt.