The Civic

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

Just out of high school I worked for my brother. He had his own real estate company and I ran errands for him; little odds and ends that he didn’t want to bother doing. I even did homework for him on occasion as he went through seminary. I didn’t do the theological heavy lifting, or anything related to math, but the occasional English assignment often topped my list of things to do.

About this time, he met a lovely woman whom he later married. During their courtship, he did all the thoughtful things a man does for a woman he wants to impress like changing oil and filter in her car and so on. In my brother’s case, he paid a shop to change the oil for him, and guess who he paid to drive the car to the shop.

My assignment was to take her car ten miles to have it oiled, lubed, filtered, hosed, stamped, spindled, mutilated and other nasty things that mechanics don’t want you to know about, and then drive it back.

This was 1980. She drove a Honda Civic. The original. The shoebox that made a VW beetle look like stretch limo. I know; I rode in a beetle many times, though I still tended to gag from having my knees pressed against my Adam’s apple.

I am not a small person and have never been. I topped six foot when I was fourteen and kept going on momentum until I added another six inches. After that, I kept on growing. Since I couldn’t get any taller, I got wider. I’d love to say it was my shoulders and chest that filled out, and while that is true, my stomach kept pace rather well. Eventually it surpassed both.

I asked my brother if it would be all right to just pick up the car and carry it to the shop. He was not amused. Thus I began the lengthy process of shoehorning my way into the matchbox toy from hell.

Getting the right leg into the car was no problem, but that was where the easy part ended. In order to sit, I first had to bend the knee. I hit the stick shift and put the car into neutral. It tried to roll away, though I think it saw what was trying to wedge itself inside of it and ran.

I stopped it easily enough; I was twice its size after all.

OK, first, the emergency brake. Now the leg, bend the knee. I got one cheek (yes that cheek) on the seat and realized I needed to insert the right arm first. I got back out and started over. Right leg, insert arm, bend knee, and choke as my neck crunched up against the roof.

I put my left elbow on the ground beside the car and rested my forehead on the pavement. This allowed me to slide the other cheek in, but I had to open the glove box first. Now I was exactly half in and half out, but the half that was out was looking under the car.

My right elbow was rubbing against the passenger side door handle, so I had to put my shoulder against the rear window to grasp the handle and pull. I sounded the horn every time I breathed in, but I had made it in as far as the stomach. Why the cigarette lighter kept popping in and out I never determined, but some part of my body evidently kept pushing it in.

I got the left leg in by virtue of crossing my ankles and got stopped cold. There was simply no way I was ever going to get my head, chest and left shoulder into the car, even if I did open the hatchback. I simply didn’t fit.

Still a job’s a job, so I improvised. I rolled down the driver’s side window and stuck my head, left shoulder, left arm and most of my torso out of the window.

Now I couldn’t reach the emergency brake release. After several moments of panic, I was finally able to release it when I belched and something caught on the handle.

I drove the car like this for the twenty-mile round trip, using the brake, clutch and accelerator with the opposite feet because I had my ankles crossed.

I read some time ago that Dolly Parton was once doing a live performance when the bodice of her dress burst open explosively. She ran offstage, donned a T-shirt and returned to say “That’s what happens when you pack ten pounds of manure into a five pound bag”.

To say that the Civic was a five-pound bag was probably accurate, but it certainly doesn’t cast me in a favorable light by comparison.

To make matters worse, the car tended to roll up on the driver’s side tires as though most of the weight of the vehicle was over balanced on that side.

HUMPH.