Thank You Note: Cute Car Place Guy

 

 

A couple of Thursdays ago, I was having a very annoying day, which in 2020, sometimes feels like an OH NO THERE’S NO MORE CIVILIZATION day. (Oh trauma-brain, not always helpful!) My internet was down so severely that they scheduled a guy without making me perform any restarts! My Animal Crossing villagers inexplicably stopped talking to me—I’m not proud of how upsetting this was! I thought it was a puzzle but a quick Google showed me it was just a fixable glitch. I thought a nice drive to the gorgeously be-leafed nearby state park would take the edge off, and it did, but OF COURSE the tire light was on.

 

During our weekend election fun/BFF time, Sweetie filled up the tires for me (I’d gotten rid of my air compressor in a flash of Tidying Up madness year before last. I am not great at life sometimes!) and the tire light went off, but I still wanted to get it checked out. I’ve still got some savings from the 600$ a week pre-Mitch McConnell-actively-starving-people-to-death times, so I was braced for new tires. I planned to get a ride from the car place and wait at home, these aren’t really sit-around-in-public-catching-up-on-the-New Yorker kinds of days.

 

OH, Cute Car Place guy. So cute he could be made-up, but isn’t. Tall, Black, with long locks and a beard and the most lovely attention-to-detail hands. Younger than me, but not by too much. He is so, so friendly and sweet. He deserves all the paragraphs.

 

My car’s name is Valentine because that’s when I got her, back during the earlier and smuttier days of the Kitten Calendar. We were in for her February inspection year before last when I decided I would ask him out by sending a very polite note to him at work. I never heard back, so I figured he was taken or just uninterested. (Or! Says my ever-hopeful brain, maybe he just didn’t get the card?)

 

This time, when I brought Val in the following Monday, he seemed disappointed that I wouldn’t be waiting around like I usually do. “Did someone tell you you can’t? You’re always welcome to stay here with us.”

 

He noticed I was due for an oil change (THAT light hadn’t come on, I work from home so I’m really not driving much.) and even though my maintenance plan had expired, he gave me the oil change for free. (Like Rory Gilmore with her Prius, I take Val to the dealership even though you’re not supposed to. I like her to have a home.)

 

This sounds way more like a praise letter on the Awesome Etiquette podcast than an entry in a sex blog, but as I’ve been learning with my Perfectly 1993 Guy story, kindness is sooooooo hot. The thoughtfulness, the care, the multipoint inspection the frequent update-texts from his work number, I can’t overstate the happiness it bought me. I spent days in a gentle cloud of I-talked-to-the-cute-guy well being, It’s kind of dazzling the difference one cute, kind face can make.

 

And Val didn’t even need new tires! When I came to pick her up, I high-fived Cute Car Place Guy with elbows like I’d learned to do at all the post-Covid protests. I missed his warm end-of-appointment handshakes—oh handshakes. Even though my mask was on, I’m sure he could see that I was smiling. It’s possible I was glowing. A light I don’t feel too often, a sweet little heart-lamp, fluttered on and the world was a little more full of hope and joy. Obviously I sent him a (non-ask-out) thank you note. Of course he texted an effusive work text when he got it, and that made me shine for like seven more hours. Thanks, thanks, thanks.