Another Day in the Country
Bells and whistles
© Another Day in the Country
For the past 25 years, my sister and I have driven older cars with the fewest possible bells and whistles to interrupt our tranquility.
My 2002 Lincoln Town Car, which I affectionately call the grandma car, still is in good condition, and I am hoping that the two of us will last long enough to attain antique status.
One of the reasons I like my old car is that it doesn’t have a million bells and whistles like all the newer cars have in abundance.
I got this car used from a dealer in Hillsboro, and even then I fussed a bit about the fact that one time I was driving to get it checked, and it just stopped about a block away from the garage and would go no farther. That behavior is too bossy in my book.
I also don’t want a car that talks to me.
Truth be told, I don’t like cars with push button windows. I yearn for the old-fashioned crank variety.
My sister, Jess, used to drive Tony Meyer’s old Mercury. It was a complaining car for certain maladies. It didn’t bother to remind you if your gas supply was low, but if the windshield wiper fluid was a fraction below the full mark, it would immediately begin beeping — and wouldn’t quit.
When a friend decided it was time she stopped driving, she gave her fancy, four-year-old car to Jess.
This much newer car has so many bells and whistles that it has several manuals to explain them all. Bells are constantly going off, and there is no difference in the severity of the dinging.
It seems to us that this car is constantly in emergency awareness mode. The bell can ding for something as simple as a door being ajar. Another bell rings when you leave the car without the car’s key fob.
“What’s wrong with having a key for a car to actually start it?” my sister wants to know. “Who dreamt up the idea of fobs? You can never even tell if the car is running or not!”
She gets so exasperated.
Bells ring when a ceiling light is on. They ring if the car thinks a tire is a bit low. For sure, the bell is always ringing when I get into the car as a passenger and the car thinks I haven’t fastened my seat belt fast enough.
“I just hate all this bell ringing,” my sister complains. “I never know if it’s some piddly reminder or an emergency. I just want it to ring if all four tires go flat — a real emergency — instead of ringing for minor issues.”
The other day, this voice in the car said out of the blue, “Roads may be slick.”
We were surprised. The car doesn’t know we are quite capable of deciding whether the weather is in danger of getting icy. It wasn’t.
To us, a dinging bell or a voice out of the blue spells big-time emergency. It’s startling, and immediately our attention is not on the driving conditions but on “What’s that bell for?”
It used to be that you got clues on how well your car was doing by listening to the sounds of the car itself.
Was the motor running smoothly? Was there any unusual tug on the steering wheel? Is there a thump as the tires rotate, or is the steering wheel pulling in one direction more than another? A driver tuned into his or her vehicle and noticed how it handled. There weren’t bells dinging constantly.
I fear that with so much happening automatically around us, we will forget how to listen because there’s no need. This machine is attempting to disable the driver’s own power of observation. No wonder we become inattentive.
At the beginning of this year, I’d like to challenge you to do more listening. Maybe a good place to begin would be to realize, for instance, that your body is talking to you constantly. It probably has as many bells and whistles as your new Ford, and it sends you signals all the time as to how it’s doing.
A twinge in your gut is a bell that you need to notice. An ache in a joint is a whistle reminding you to pay attention. Any degree of nausea is like the handbrake in your car being pulled automatically, stopping you in your tracks.
Just like in your automobile, if bells and whistles are going off in your body, you should be paying attention. It’s not the time to swallow some painkiller. It’s time to figure out why that body part is hurting.
Your body is more magical than the most expensive vehicle you can buy with all its latest gadgets. If you listen to your body and correct your wrong action, your body, which is quite literally the vehicle that allows you to live on earth, can even repair itself.
Bet you don’t have a car that can do that — no matter how many bells and whistles it has.
If we practice listening to our bodies, maybe we’ll get better at listening to people we live with and our neighbors next door.
Practicing our listening skills on our friends and family would also help us listen more attentively to what’s happening in our community.
I know, I know — there are so many kinds of uninformative, pesky bells and whistles going off these days that it makes it more and more difficult to discern what’s happening — even when it’s just another day in the country. Hang in there!