Necessary July 4th car shopping with my mom

Illustration for article titled Necessary July 4th car shopping with my mom

My mom has been talking for a while about wanting to get a new car to replace her 2005 Acura MDX that she bought new. She has been talking about it more since my dad bought his new Volvo XC60. But today, on this day of many sales, she’s out probably buying a new car. She’s not usually this decisive.

Advertisement

Of course, she’s not this decisive on her own. She was driving out on some rural roads on the eastern shore of Maryland and spun her MDX into a ditch. The suspension or who knows what else is messed up enough that an insurance claim would probably total it. She’s been driving a previous generation Chevy Equinox rental and needs to buy something.

Before she put her MDX in a ditch, my mom had been making all these overly convoluted lists of cars and criteria that didn’t make sense with each other or anything. But since she needs a car now, that brings some focus to the situation. This past weekend my wife and I visited my parents out at the shore, and I left a pair of shorts there, which they said they’d bring back “at some point.”

Advertisement

Today, I got a text from my mom: she was going to be test driving a CX-5 at the Mazda dealer and would it be ok for her to drop off the shorts? Ok sure mom when? 12:15.

My mom exists in an alternate universe where the laws of time do not apply, so I knew this time would not come to pass. But my wife got all irked like WE GOTTA FINISH THIS CLEANING WE JUST STARTED NOW BEFORE YOUR MOM GETS HERE OMG GAHHHHH.

Advertisement

In the midst of cleaning, my mom texted, “actually more like 12:45-1.” We kept cleaning.

At 1:20 we got a knock on the door: a package!

She came by like 1:30. She handed me the shorts from the front door, almost turned around and went to her car, but then decided to step inside to tell me some convoluted story about the reason she was late was she tried to pour some past-its-date hair dye down the bathroom sink but she stained it and here are the multitude of ways she tried cleaning it.

Advertisement

Thankfully, I got her on the topic of cars, and she was rambling, and I said “so you want it to run on regular fuel right?” and I just so happened to have already researched a list of options for her. So I went over it with her and she is checking out:

Mazda CX-5

Volvo XC40

Honda CR-V

Kia Sportage

Kia Sorento

And maybe also the Hyundai Tucson and Santa Fe Sport. But those are at the bottom of the list.

Advertisement

We’ll see what she picks! She’s usually way more detail oriented and nitpicky but I think she’s going to buy something on some dealer’s lot today.