Sometimes, you just need a porg

Now my car is in the shop.

Here’s the story:

since the weekend, it had been making a whirring noise when the car is idling, and I’d been avoiding dealing with it.  Today, it wouldn’t start.  Or, more precisely, after I had dropped off my son and the lawnmower at a house a couple blocks away where he’s doing the mowing while they’re on vacation, it wouldn’t start.  It just clicked.  And I thought, “I don’t know what that noise was, but it sure as heck seems to have caused the car to die.”

Now, just in case it made a difference, I got out the jump-starter from the back seat storage compartment, but that didn’t do anything.  Was it a matter of the jump-starter not being sufficiently charged?  Was the battery terminal too corroded?  It looked like I was out $100 for a tow.  Happily, a neighbor came by wondering what a strange car and a strange woman was up to, parked, hood up, in his neighbor’s driveway.  I told my tale of woe, and he said he had a more powerful jump-starter which he would bring over.  He also brought over a battery terminal cleaning device, and said that his hobby was cars and in his experience, when the battery gets too corroded it can stop working suddenly even without having been sitting or having been drained in any fashion.  My son was very eager to help, and to learn*, and between the two of them, they cleaned the post, and it started up right away.  I ended up letting the car idle while my son mowed the lawn; then we brought the mower home and I took the car to the repair shop, which is, happily, a relatively short walk from home, and, fortunately, there’s no where I have to be tomorrow and no activities to take the kids to until the evening when my husband will be back anyway.

(* True story:  my son got the “most polite” award at the 8th grade graduation dinner last spring.  He was mystified, and his teacher said, “but, [name], you always say please and thank you and are genuinely polite even if you never notice it about yourself.”)

So hopefully tomorrow I’ll get the report that the battery issue was just a fluke, and the whirring sound is easily repaired.  But there are no guarantees, as the car is 10 years old, even though it only has 70,000 miles on it due to having been telecommuting for the past 6 years or so.  It’s already rusting — which I understand to be the norm for a Grand Caravan — and the air conditioning needs a recharge which I never got around to over the summer.  And, really, I could well replace it, but I just am not yet reconciled to replacing a Grand Caravan with another Grand Caravan, and yet there’s no obvious alternate vehicle to replace it with, if we want to be able to transport bikes, and fit a family of five and gear on a road trip, or the like.  I mean, sure, I could get a Pacifica, and even get a plug-in hybrid and not need to get gas except for road trips, but it’d still be a minivan.

And, yes, my chant is always, be grateful that we have the cash on hand that car repairs, or new fridges, or whatever else (the dishwasher isn’t rinsing properly, either) isn’t a financial burden.  But I’m annoyed.

So I’m thinking about porgs.

You know porgs — the puffin-like creatures that we know are a part of the next Star Wars movie, both due to a brief spot in the trailer, and because they are a part of the massive marketing juggernaut that is Disney.  Blogger Adam Frey urges us all to Say No To Porgs, and, with it, to reject Disney’s blatant marketing gimmick of a cute, cuddly creature that (one presumes) adds nothing to the plot of the movie, any more than Baby Groot did in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. II.

But you know what?  I liked Baby Groot.

And I liked the way Baby Groot functioned in the movie, as a form of comic relief without necessarily having a character making wisecracks.  It especially seems like a useful device in moviemaking as it seems to exist in the year 2017, when there isn’t otherwise any comic relief or any break in the action.  (At least in the James Bond movies, you’d have that point midway through when he seduces the Bond Girl.)

Now, we have no idea what the function of the porgs will be.  Maybe they’ll be what Luke and Rey eat for dinner, a good source of protein.  Maybe not; .  But when Frey says,

Isn’t that thing just adorable? Don’t you just want to sell all your action figures, your car, and your children, and just surround your home with those saccharine little creatures so they can purr you to sleep with their little noises? Who knew that if an Ewok f***ed an owl, it could produce something so magical?

and means it sarcastically, well, I guess it seems to me that there are some days when I could use a few porgs — especially since, until tomorrow anyway, I can’t even buy any ice cream, and I’ve already had a hefty portion of the secret Halloween candy stash.

#TeamPorg

#SayYesToPorgs

#DoesPorgTasteLikeChicken?

Image: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Porg ; which probably falls under fair use guidelines.