My mouth got me in trouble at the car dealership

So my van, AKA “the gold bomb”, has about exploded for the final time sending us into an avid auto search for the last few months. When the lining of the roof starts hanging lower than the seats you know you need to upgrade. And we’re just not even going to talk about the hint of painted letters “Community Cares” that still linger on the windows even after multiple scrub downs.

All that to say – it was time to look for new wheels. ASAP.

And so we did. We strolled into our first dealership on the list of places to look. The young car salesman greeted us at the door and shook our hand. He bent down and in a bit of a “awwww how cute” voice said to Sophie, “Oh hi there, you must be six years old.”  So not cool for a girl who’s almost nine going on twelve.

We talk for a bit about what we’re looking for and then he leaves to go talk to his “manager”. As soon as he left Sophie quips back, “That dude just called me six. I’m so assaulted!” We gave a quick vocab refresher course on the actual word she was looking for which was insulted and clearly not assaulted. Still she was insulted.

A bit later our guy shows us around the lot and a pulls a few cars out for us to look at. I forgot my car looking protocol and broke one major rule – never ever get excited about a car and by all means don’t say you like it right away. Well, I forgot that part and when I saw one car it just fell out of my mouth – “Oh! I LIKE that car!” Randy cut his eyes at me and I knew immediately I messed up. So I quickly try to recover and say, “Well, no not really. I don’t actually like that car. I thought I liked that car but nooooooo, I totally don’t like it. Well unless it was like free or something. Then I might like that car.” Okay, so it wasn’t that bad but kinda sorta close.

Sales boy leaves us again to go and see what he can do for us by talking to his manager and when he left Randy and I both discussed the error of my car buying skills. Literally he says to me, “I just need you to let me do the talking. You say too much. You are never supposed to say the top price we are willing to pay and you never ever ever talk about how much you love the car.” To which I reply, “I knowwwwww honey, I’m so sorry. I won’t say ANYthing else. Promise.”

We decide moving on to another car lot would be best – fresh start – one in which my lips are sealed plus a new selection of cars. This time I do great but we’ve got Sophie over there telling the car dude all about our other car and how the ceiling is coming down on us and how the windows won’t roll down, blah, blah, blah. Of course we didn’t drive our other car to the dealership in hopes to hide the true state of our other car. Pride will always mess you up people. That’s what I’m learning.

We end up hitting one last place at 8pm and while we were there a trade in drove on the lot. A vehicle we were very interested in but the guy still had all his stuff in it. So we waited and waited and waited for him to get his stuff out and then we looked at it and loved it. But because you don’t say that I just held my love inside and pointed out the bird doo-doo on the windshield and the black smudges on the tires. But the good news is my man doesn’t only preach great – he can wheel and deal especially when his wife keeps her mouth shut. So we test drove it, pulled up a car fax report and landed on a price we liked a lot. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my cary buying strategy but we did end up getting an incredible deal on a 2005 Honda Odyssey Touring with only 64K miles on it! Whoo-hoo!!! I just hope I know how to work it right.

So that’s my car buying story and I’m sticking to it.

** Update on the van – so were driving it off the lot and about 10 miles into the trip home I hear Mitchell let out a scream and look back and the seat he’s sitting in has totally folded up on him. He tries to adjust it and it falls all the way back flat. And then all the way forward. It will not stay up straight. It’s so not funny but I have to say I was laughing so hard. We are hoping the dealership will fix it or we’ll have to return it. We have 3 days to have it inspected by our mechanic and point out any issues. We are hoping they will repair it so we can keep it. So I guess we won’t bury the gold bomb quite yet.