Sorry my love, I need a new model

This is going to come as a shock to the woman who shares my life. No doubt it will hurt her. Maybe she’ll even cry.

But this has been a long time coming. It’s been building inside me, like a mushroom growing in a deep, dark place.

I’m not even sure how I can put it into words. Truth is, I can’t tell her face-to-face, so I’m going to do it right here. Right now.

I need a new model. Something newer with more … um, more  … oh, let’s just come out and say it, accessories.

I’m talking about a new car, of course.

What did you think I was talking about?

Anyway, it’s a sad fact that I suffer from car envy. Six months after buying a new car, I get the itch. Sometimes it’s less.

And not just any kind of car. A sports car.

I’ve owned sports cars all my life. Mustang. MGB. Camero. Z3. Z4. 350Z. 370Z. I like any car with numbers and letters in its name, especially the letter Z.

I adored my Z cars. They were sleek. They were fast. They were … me.

I was doing just fine until the day came when I realized that I needed a forklift to get out of the car.

They’re low slung, and the older I got so was I. Sometimes, it could take me half a day to get into the thing and another day or two to get out. There were times I was tempted to just sleep in the car because it would be less trouble than exiting the vehicle.

So, a few years back, I did the grown up thing and put away my sports car dreams and bought a Nissan Juke.

Perhaps you’ve never heard of it. That’s because Nissan only sold two of them. One to an Uber driver in Zimbabwe, the other to me.

The Juke is, let’s be honest, bug ugly. If you saw something that looked like it crawling across your living room floor you’d step on it.

But I manned up and bought it anyway. By the time I drove the 15 minutes from the dealership to my house, I was ready to trade it in.

I suffered for a year. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Well, that’s a lie. There’s nothing that keeps me from eating. But I couldn’t sleep. That part’s true. I’d lie awake, dreaming of Porsche Boxters, and Chevy Corvettes and Dodge Vipers.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and I begged the woman who loves me to set me free. She relented, but said enough with the cars I couldn’t get into or out of.

“You’re not 18 anymore,” she said, and let me tell you that came as a surprise.

Still, I took her advice and I bought a used – USED!!!!!!!!! – BMW 128I convertible. It’s a nice car, but … it’s 7 years old!!! Seven!!!!! Usually, I’d have owned 3 maybe 4 cars in a seven-year span.

I so much want to ask, beg, plead, beseech, entreat her to let me fly again in a brand new, oh, say, Mazda Miata.

Unfortunately, she has stopped working full-time and has announced that from now to the end of my days we are on a budget.

“No more eating out, no more movies,” she has decreed.

“Uh, what are we going to do then?”

“We’ll sit at home, on the couch together and watch episodes of Call the Midwife.”

“And my car?”

“It’s a perfectly fine car. And it has the added bonus that you can actually get out of it.”

I suppose she’s right. It’s a fin … excelle … okay car.

It just isn’t a Boxster, or Corvette, or Viper.