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Life Choices: My Subaru Outlook
So much in life seems to happen from momentum. From where we live to what we drive is based on myriad factors and variables and choices we made long before the present. The pressure is immense to get it right, on time, the first time. It was too much. Plus, we needed a change of scenery. So we busted out of town and country and got ourselves sufficiently Mexified, outfitted with a Jeep, a beach house, street dogs, got tan, got drunk, got married, surfaced from a wreck of debt, bought a boat, and started thinking about what’s next. Where to go, how to live and what to drive are on the brain daily. You can envision yourself in any number of lives from browing real estate listings and building imaginary SUVs. The possibilities are endless.
By rights, we should own a bicycle, a Vespa, or a buspass, because our car ownership history is less than stellar. But we’re going back for the Big Show, the Whole Shebang, The American Dream, complete with house, car(s), and too many useless pretty things from here. We’re buying back in, one of these months and we are preparing to be prepared. We’re going full Girl Scout this time around.
For the first time ever we actually consulted one of those consumer reports type periodicals, quite possibly, Consumer Reports to learn which models are the safest, most reliable, best gas mileage, and so on. This notion somehow never occurred to us in the past and our process went something like this:
Malcolm: Look, a sweet-ass Wrangler, chuck a U-Turn. sold! Here’s my money, Shady Mexican Freddy. or
Jillian: charming old Volvo, needed now. we will name him Roger and he will be my Roger. Here’s my money, Creepy Parking Lot Guy.
We were formerly all about style, aesethics, and soul when it came to choosing a vehicle. But car shopping isn’t a Motown Record. You heard it here first. We still very much want what we want, a cool car that reflects who we are and feels age-appropriate. The car that fits our needs and fills our heart with joy is, unsurprisingly, the Subaru Outback. Sometime between when we left in 2006 and now it has become the ubiquitous Yuppie mobile. Or maybe it was already popular and we just weren’t seeing it. How on earth did this happen to me?
Lately, we’ve been outside looking in. We’re picking up speed and thinking about square footage. The return might prove more difficult but in the planning it’s just as fun. Dropping out was a grand plan and we are enjoying all the freedoms with a delicious sense of impending change. When we abandoned home and jettisoned possessions it was with the hope of roaming free and eventually growing up. With a coarse set on a more regular adventure I wonder if with this car we can start to fit back in, if that is even what we want.
