Stupid Idiot Jerk

I plan to drive the twenty miles home tonight with my gas gauge on empty. That’s just one of the many benefits of the wonderful Chevy Cavalier- great gas mileage. To name a few others: there is the four cylinders of fury, endless trunk space, and a design that the ladies just can’t resist. Not just the ladies either; sometimes I get the attention of men as well, expecting to see a woman driver no doubt. The Chevy Cavalier is not just sexy—it’s unisexy. So regardless of your gender this car increases you sex appeal.

I feel though, to be fair, that I should mention the one and only downside I’ve encountered while I’ve owned my shiny red Cavalier. That would be it’s hair-trigger horn. It’s got one of those airbag/horn steering wheels (at least I assume there is an airbag in there) which normally takes a fair amount of pressure to beep the horn. However, I guess the Cavalier scientists must have seen this as a problem and engineered it so that the slightest touch or even a strong breeze will make the car’s horn beep. It’s not at all a flattering beep either, kind of nasally and unsure of itself rather than strong and assertive. This has always left me with the lingering doubt that the car is not as unisex as I assumed upon purchasing it, but its pep and zippiness help to calm my fears. So this hair-trigger horn has caused me much undue embarrassment as I always seem to fall victim to it in the worst of situations.

For example, the last time I accidentally beeped the horn was on my way to work this morning. I was gracefully coming to a stop while I shifted my hand in such a way as to create a high pressure zone over the steering wheel and sure enough my car let out a long, annoying whine of a beep which seemed to indicate to the driver in front of me that I wanted him to run the red light. I never did notice if he reacted of not but the mother in the minivan which was waiting at the light along side of me sure did. I guess maybe it was instinctive motherly defense of some poor old “good driver” which made her shriek out some of the loudest obscenities I’ve ever heard in my direction. I found the prospect of explaining the horn problem to her difficult and she didn’t seem to show any signs of letting me speak anyway, so I and her 11 year old son, whom she was yelling past, sat staring straight ahead completely mortified at the whole incident.

That was by far the worst event caused by the touchy horn, but it goes off accidentally at least twice a week. Aside from the one incident just described, these random horn blasts cause either panic or confusion in the pedestrians I pass. Whether I scare the living daylights out of someone or thoroughly bewilder them is almost always dependent on whether they are facing my car or not. I’ve noticed that people with their backs to me seem to assume the worst when they hear a beep and quickly jerk around and prepare for impact, seeming to think that the only reason someone would beep is to warn them of impending danger. On the other hand, people facing my car when I beep get this look on their faces of someone who is squinting to try to make out my face while trying to think of someone they know who drives a red Chevy Cavalier. The thought of them going around for days asking friends, acquaintances, and coworkers if they drove past and beeped at them on such and such a date is so amusing that I wonder if the Cavalier’s designers had these very occurrences in mind when they made the car.

Intentional or not, this horn has caused a great deal of problems for me in an otherwise perfect automobile. I would hope that in future models the squeaky, hair-trigger horn be replaced by a horn more fitting to the some of the male clientèle of the Chevy Cavalier. Even some sort of adjustment for the tone and pressure to activate the horn would work out well, pleasing the whole range of Cavalier drivers and admirers.