The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture
said the convertible got the worst of it, but both cars were running fine.
“Want to go in the garage and look at them?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Let’s just finish dinner.”
She was surprised. I wasn’t angry. I hardly seemed
concerned. As she’d soon learn, my measured response was
rooted in my upbringing.
After dinner, we looked at the cars. I just shrugged, and I could
see that for Jai, an entire day’s worth of anxiety was just melting away.
“Tomorrow morning,” she promised, “I’ll get estimates on the repairs.”
I told her that wasn’t necessary. The dents would be OK. My
parents had raised me to recognize that automobiles are there to get you
from point A to point B. They are utilitarian devices, not expressions of
social status. And so I told Jai we didn’t need to do cosmetic repairs.
We’d just live with the dents and gashes.
Jai was a bit shocked. “We’re really going to drive around in dented
cars?” she asked.
“Well, you can’t have just some of me, Jai,” I told her. “You
appreciate the part of me that didn’t get angry because two ‘things’ we
own got hurt. But the flip side of that is my belief that you don’t repair
things if they still do what they’re supposed to do. The cars still work.
Let’s just drive ’em.”
OK, maybe this makes me quirky. But if your trashcan or
wheelbarrow has a dent in it, you don’t buy a new one. Maybe that’s
because we don’t use trashcans and wheelbarrows to communicate our
social status or identity to others. For Jai and me, our dented cars became
a statement in our marriage. Not everything needs to be fixed.
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