I Done Got Me a Car (and a Diet)

So I'm sure you noticed this on your own calendar, but Saturday was Daddy/Daughter bonding day. For my special daddy/daughter event, we went car shopping. Because the stupid-head collission repair center totalled my car. I ended up getting a car which I am quite pleased with, for a payment that might allow me to still purchase groceries every other month. But that wasn't the fun part.

At the first place we pulled into, we parked the car and walked up to the little building (picture seedy looking used car lot), and this youngish guy wandered out and said something disinterested like "so I guess you've done some research and you probably know what you want?" I believe my father was holding piece of paper in his hands. So, you know, he was deducing and all. Then we told him the car we wanted to look at, and he was like, oh, that's not here. That's on our other lot. "But it was listed online as being at this address," my father pointed out. *Blank stare*. Oooooookay. Well, um, thanks.

At the second place we looked (the other lot--also seedy), we parked and walked towards the little building. A young man and woman in jeans and t-shirts, enjoying a smoke, stood there. As we approached, they were like, "hey." After a moment, they extinguished their cigarettes. At some point they asked us if we were looking for a car. And then informed us the one we were looking for was on another lot. And showed us the crappiest used car, that wreeked of cigarette smoke (blank stare from the woman when I pointed this out..."I haven't been in that one.") and I'm pretty sure the holes in the upholstery were from cigarette burns.

At the third place we looked at (an actual dealership), there were five or six salesmen just standing around when we got there. They all kind of looked at each other, and quite possibly did rock paper scissors, and then one came our way. The one with the cowboy heels with clacky heels. Seriously? Cliche much? He was all humble, gorsh, let's see what we might have on this here lot. And then he wandered around like he'd never seen the cars before. And then he looked for a car that I'm pretty sure didn't actually ever exist while he pointed out other cars far above the mileage and price point I had specified. And then we got in a car and drove down the street to the other lots they owned. We got out, looked around, he scratched his head some more, and then we went back to the first lot. And he scratched his head some more. And he showed me a car that was out of my price range, too high in mileage, and crappy. And THEN (and I swear he was trying to create the appearance of working really hard for us to produce this magical car by going through all the aforementioned motions), he showed me a cheaply made car, with no bells and whistles, that was about 4,000 abovie my price point, and had 97,000 miles on it. Yeah, I did not feel saved. I think that's what he was going for. He ran inside to "ask what price he could knock it down to," while my dad half-heartedly looked at the car and discussed leaving. He emerged to introduce his associate, who was taking over because he "had a phone call." Associate proceeded to inform us that he was from Brooklyn, where they talk straight. And then he babbled about the pro's of the car, including the fact that there were screws you could loosen all by yourself to change the headlights. They shore do have some straight talk in Brooklyn.

Once we escaped there we went to a whole other county and found an unslimey salesperson who looked like they had not had their will to live sucked out of them, and we got me a car. And that, my friends, is how I plan to lose weight.