MY BIG FAT EMISSIONS TEST
By Dan Miller
Dec. 7, 2007
There was a smile on my face as I drove into the auto emissions testing place.
There was no line.... only one car ahead of me, and it was already being tested.
So I would be next.
This would be quick and easy.
And a sign on the building had more good news.
The price for the test.... $9.
Then I recalled we'd done a story on how SysTech International -- the company that won Metro's latest testing contract.... has actually dropped the price from $10 to $9.
Wow, how often do we see prices on anything lowered anymore?
Within 2 minutes I was beckoned into the testing bay.
The nice young lady told me -- as they always do -- that I'd have to step out of my car so she could hook that thing-a-majig under the dashboard to do whatever it does.
I got out and stood over to the side to observe the process.
The nice young lady turned around and said, "Sir, you'll have to go into that little room."
I said, "Thanks, but I'll just stand right here and watch, if that's OK."
“No sir, you'll have to go inside the little room," she said, a bit more emphatically.
"Wow," I said, "I don't want to cause trouble."
I opened the door and stepped into a little barren room.
It contained a few chairs and a water dispenser.
I felt like, at any moment, Police Chief Ronal Serpas and the boys might come in to ask me a few questions.
I never sat.
I paced back and forth across the entire 5 feet of the room, actually feeling a bit nervous about the test.
What was taking so long?
Was there a problem?
Finally the nice young lady motioned that I could come out.... and she told me to sit in my car.
"This is encouraging," I thought.
At least I wasn't being interrogated, or cuffed.
A few minutes later she walked up with the bad news.
My car had failed the test.
"What!!??.... my car didn't pass the test?"
I couldn't believe my ears.
Never before had my trusty little car.... with fewer than 40,000 miles on it.... failed.
Suddenly, an old familiar feeling welled up in me.... it was a sensation I hadn't felt since I used to see my test grades in school (where I felt it far too often).
The nice young lady explained what I needed to do before returning to get it retested.
She never stopped being nice.
And I was nice to her.
But, as I drove away "conversing" with my car -- my smile had turned upside down, and my grumpy-o-meter was overheating.
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