Eden Winters and the Great Car Caper

There once was a m/m writer named Eden, who worked hard at her evil day job and saved her pennies in order to fulfill her dreams of purchasing a new car. 

It seems she'd promised her granddaughter, "When you're able to drive, I'll give you my car, and I'll get another." You see, Eden loved her nine year old Hyundai Sonata so well, that the only way she could part with it was to give it to someone who'd continue the love.

Then came the matter of choosing a new car. What to get? What to get? Having loved her Sonata so very much, Eden didn't even seriously consider any other car. Her goal was to have a shiny new vehicle in her driveway by May, enabling her to hand over the keys to the old car on her grandchild's birthday. 

One day Eden was having lunch before going to the grocery store, for she never liked to go to the store hungry, when the idea occurred to her, "If I'm considering a new car, I should go look at one on the lot."

Long story short, an hour later Eden signed papers on her brand new 2013 Hyundai Sonata. The only problem at the moment was the car was very sophisticated, and our heroine, alas, was not. Furthermore, the voice activated navigation system believed Eden had an accent, a fact Eden firmly denies. When asking the car to dial "Sarah" the car dialed "Eileen" instead. But I digress. 

So, Eden drove away in the very first car she'd ever picked out for herself, extremely pleased. She shopped for groceries, as originally planned, then, because the car didn't understand her, she used her phone navigation to find the nearest route back home. 

Wow! The car handled great at high speeds out on the interstate! And got great gas mileage. She grinned as the odometer rolled from seven miles to eight, to nine. She stopped by the mailbox on the way to her house, and as she was backing up, heard an ominous clunk! 

Oh noes! Eden leapt from her car, terrified she'd somehow wrecked her new car. The fender hung off the vehicle. She searched everywhere, but couldn't find a thing she might have hit. She called the salesman, who insisted he'd never heard of such, and he told her to call roadside assistance. Cold, alone in the dark only 1/8 mile from home, Eden waited, doing what any red-blooded American would do in such circumstance --she bitched and moaned via Facebook, comforting herself with the well wishes of friends. She'd just driven 65 mph on the Interstate, and at 2 mph the car falls apart?

A tow-truck arrived, driven by a patented SC good-ole-boy, who simply snapped the fender back on, saying, "Somebody at the factory just didn't install it right." 

Very grateful, Eden thanked the man and went home. 

The next day she stared out the window frequently at her new car, too afraid to drive it. 

Monday came and she left home early in the morning for work. Flap, flap, flap. What the hell? Flap, flap, flap, scraaaaaappppppe. In the cold and dark, Eden pulled over to the side of a lonely country road to discover that the fender well around the tire was broken, flapping, and dragging. She continued on to work driving 30 mph, with emergency flashers on. As soon as the dealership opened she called, only to be told once again, "We've never heard of that. Are you sure you didn't hit something?" They also instructed her to call roadside assistance again. 

She rode with the tow truck driver to the dealership, declined a loaner car, and reclaimed her nine year old vehicle, which sat in the parking lot pending a willing friend to drive it home. 

The last Eden heard, the maintenance manager ordered a new fender. She wasn't pleased, for she'd bought a new car, not a repaired one. Many phone calls followed, until the dealership agreed to give Eden a brand new car. 

Eden was scared of design flaws and worried the new car would shed parts too. As it turned out, after examining the car from underneath, the maintenance department determined that the car had been damaged in transit on a car hauler and that the driver had clipped the bumper back in place and failed to report the damage to the car's undercarriage. 

Wow! What a relief to know the car probably won't fall apart. It's been twenty-four hours since Eden got her new car, and the fenders are still on. She counts that as a win.