Cars (Tools, Purpose, and Ages)

I had three different car buying conversations in one day.* 

One was about buying a car for a teenage child. We talked about the one the kid will get versus the one they’ll want to buy (for themselves) next. How a car is a tool for independence when we’re that age. 

Another was with a similar age friend about how we just want the cars we have now to last. He called me after picking up his car from the garage, where he paid a little extra for all the post-COVID era tuneups it needed. He’s using the car for work more again, and how he “wins” on the expense reporting of it all. How a car is a tool for dependability at our age. 

Then I talked to a 70-something who was saying “This is probably the last car I’ll ever have to buy. Heck, somebody is going to have to start driving me around soon.” In a hopeful way, not mournfully. How a car is a tool for interdependence once we reach a certain age. 

The cars are just tools. They get us where we want to go and where others need us to be. 

And our relationships with the others in our lives, through tangential relationships to the tools, it moves in patterns too.  

How many tools have the same age-based relationship functions of providing independence, dependence, and interdependence? 

h/t John R. for the email thread in response to “Bukowski On Why Most Writers Are Boring” for inspiring this post. He framed out the dependence, independence, and interdependence idea. It struck me in the context of the car conversations I was already pondering what to do with, hence today’s note.

*in case you’re wondering why a person would have conversations like this, see the professional section on my about(ish) page.