Data Before People

Going for an am cortisol this morning. Wish me luck. I have a hard time believing it will be normal, but my body has been weird before. The second that needle slips out? I will be slamming back Hydrocortisone like a sorority pledge in a jello shot competition. I fully expect the day to get better from that point.

We are now up to two cars that stall and don't start reliably and generally act like junkyard statues. One is an older Ford van and the other a quite new Honda, which we babysit for the parent living in the Caribbean.

No mechanic can find anything wrong with either car. As you may recall, we took the van to three mechanics trying to find a fix.

The van never malfunctioned for anyone but us. If it hadn't acted up for the hubby I would've been told (by the hubby) it was all in my head.

Same for the Honda. In fact, my default assumption when things go wrong with a car is that I'm hallucinating until it happens to the hubby too. Which it did with the Honda.

The mechanics rely on cutting edge technology that uses computerized diagnostics. They don't even have to lift the hood anymore. All the diagnostics come back normal, of course.

Which leads to the following exchanges:

"The car's fine, tests perfect. Bye."

"Wait, what if it stalls on the highway?"

"It's perfect. The diagnostics say so."

My question is, what happened to critical thinking? Or digging around in the guts of things to find the answer? How is it that a computers can so quickly usurp a first hand report?

I told the hubby, "This is just like medicine. They want to bring in computer models for diagnostics there too. Watch, we'll all be normal because the computer can't do math high enough for patients like me and the physicians, just as they do now with tests, won't go any further than 'the computer says you're normal'."

The hubby laughed. "Meanwhile we'll all be having heart attacks in stalled vehicles with a semi barreling down on us."

"Yep...unless... what if our cars are possessed by the maverick spirit of my late grandfather?" I tapped my chin. "He would totally do that to me. Maybe what we need is an exorcism."

"An exorcism?"

"Or...do they do acupuncture on cars?"

I'm calling it right now. The big trend for car owners is going to be complementary therapies where all those 'perfect' cars can find some help. Feng shui. Acupuncture. Past life regression for steel. Reiki for your ride. Gas with vitamins. Homeopathic car wax. The list is endless.

Meanwhile, I'll be looking up exorcism rituals.