"You know, the one with stripes."

The "service engine soon" light came on in my car on the way to work yesterday. I was shocked for two reasons:

#1- I never knew my car even had one of those lights. It's a '95, which I thought was before the time they made those lights. It's never come on in my car before, ever. Seriously.

#2- It meant that something huge and horrible and major was wrong.

That saddened me. I love my car. It's now almost 12 years old with 125K miles on it. I took the light to mean that it was time for it to fail - if I'd never seen it come on before now, surely this time meant the engine was only moments away from a final spectacular death.

I had noticed that when the light was on, the coolant temp gauge was not working, so I wondered if the radiator was to blame. I at least mentioned that to the mechanics when I dropped it off - while I also mentioned the following:

"By the way - my Saturn is the black one out there. I noticed you have a white one of the same year and model."

The mechanic made note of it. There's a reason I passed on this information. Last spring I took the car in to have a clunking sound checked out. The mechanic called several hours later to give me the longest list of repairs I'd ever heard. It involved failing brakes, a poor suspension system and so much more. I was in shock, I'd never noticed half the things he'd mentioned (like a majorly bouncing car due to poor shocks).

I stammered through a conversation with the guy, who ended it with, "Honestly, this thing's maybe got a year left in it, it's on its last legs."

In shock, I told him I'd have to call the wife to discuss the potential fixes with her. I thought, "This sounds like he's not even talking about my car - like he's looking at some other car." I told the mechanic again that I'd never noticed any of the symptoms he'd described, but it was pointless.

The next morning I get a call from the mechanic that cleared things up.

"Um, as it turns out, um, your car is fine. What happened yesterday is that there were two almost identical Saturns in our lot - one with a huge amount of repair work to be done and then yours. Yours is fine. There's nothing wrong with it. We made one little tightening of a bolt and it's fixed. No charge. Um, the other Saturn obviously has worse news, but it's not yours."

I laughed really hard, glad that they hadn't started any work on my vehicle incorrectly as a further mistake. Then I felt bad for the owner of the other car - who'd gotten the bad end of those two phone calls.

Anyway - that's why every time I bring it in now, I tell them the color and license plate number.

Moving on, yesterday's repair shop story was odd as well. After taking it in that afternoon, they called several hours later with the verdict - a rather humorous one at that.

Mechanic: "The wires to your coolant temp gauge and your thermostat are all chewed up. We're trying to repair them, but we might have to replace them."

Me: "So you're saying some type of rodent or something chewed up the wires?"

Mechanic: "Yup."

Me: "Like a rat? Would a rat do that?"

Mechanic: "Well, it's probably smaller than that."

Me: "A mouse?"

Mechanic: "No, um - it's the one between those two. It's a different size than that. Um..."

Me: "A squirrel?"

Mechanic: "No. Man - what are those things called? They're between rats and mice in size...ah....damn..."

Me: "A mole?"

Mechanic: "Nope, damn, what do you call those things... (holds phone away from his head to yell at his fellow mechanics)... HEY GUYS! GUYS! What do you call those little rodent things that chew? (unintelligible chatter) No no, not that. Smaller. With stripes..... Yeah! A chipmunk! (puts the phone back against his head) Chipmunks will do that."

And so I might have chipmunks enjoying my sweet sweet thermostat wires. Chip and Dale are bastards.

In any case, at least the engine didn't decide to die on me now. Long live Saturn!