CV&T Lifestyle Editor Tish King

Recently I bought a new car. Well, it’s been over 10 years since I’ve had a new car and boy have things changed.

When I put the key in the ignition and turn it on, the dash lights up like a Christmas tree. I’ve never seen so many different colors of lights and different icons in my life.

Let me see now….there are little red cars with different symbols on them; the green ECO light comes on (whatever that is); the red EPS light, and the yellow ABS light, comes on–I don’t know exactly what that means, I think it has something to do with the brakes–I’m not too sure, at first I thought it was like a pinball machine and I just needed to “tilt” the thing. So, I found the lever that lets you tilt the wheel, and guess what? that wasn’t it.  I guess I’ll have to give in and read that little book that comes with the car.

I figured out, all by myself, that when the blue “P” light is on, the car is in “Park,” and when the blue “D” light is on, the car is in “Drive”–you get the idea. There are two blue signals on the dash that usually have more bars than my cell phone when its in a good area. Well, when one of them got down to the bottom bar, I noticed there was a little symbol that looks like a gas pump, so I  guessed that to be the gas gauge–it’s a good thing it didn’t take any longer to realize what that was or I would be up the creek without a paddle, as they say. But, I would actually have been up or down the road without any gas. 

Speaking of cell phone, this car has places to plug up your cell phone so you can talk hands free–although I can’t imagine any of us talking without our hands, it even has the phone controls on the steering wheel AND the radio controls are on the wheel too. Now, I rarely ever play the radio or CD while I’m in the car and practically never talk on my cell phone–I don’t think that is safe; or maybe it’s just me getting old and can’t multi-task as well as I used to.

Something doesn’t seem quite right though, every time I try to shift the gears into drive, reverse or park, the windshield wipers come on. Now, I’ve been driving for a little over 50 years and the gear shift has always been the stick on the steering column–why in the world would someone want to change that? Do they just want to see us “older” people struggle to drive a new car or are they trying to get us off the highway? I wonder if there is a hidden camera somewhere.

Well, I guess an old dog must learn new tricks to keep up with things today–on this car the windshield wipers are in the place where normally the gear shift is and the gear shift is on the console–you got the picture yet? I’m liable to wear that windshield wiper stick out before I get use to changing gears on the console.

This is only the beginning folks. I took a quick look at that manual, and I think that car will be out-dated and worn out by the time I cipher all that stuff.