The Art of Compromise

With our Honda Civic Hybrid pushing 100,000 miles, Beni convinced me to consider the possibility of acquiring a new family ride. We weren’t so worried about our car breaking down; rather, we were hoping to maximize its resale value. Citing our growing family, Beni made the case for a bigger vehicle, perhaps a minivan, something along the lines of this…


…to which I countered, by appealing to our tradition of eschewing vehicles that burn a sizable amount of fossil fuels, something more like this…


…before we finally settled on this – a used Toyota Highlander Hybrid:


In the end, we traded in our beloved Civic Hybrid, for which, despite our son's best efforts when closing the deal, we didn't get offered anything close to what the car was worth to us in memories (it was the car in which we'd brought both of our children home after their births and taken countless road trips).


There were mixed emotions on the drive home: on the one hand – at the 10 o'clock position, of course – I was thrilled to be driving home in another hybrid, but on the other – gripping the steering wheel at 2 o'clock – I was sad to let our other one go, especially into the hands of our cloying and oily salesman, whose motivational signs (as seen below) were the only thing that could match him in cheesiness. This was a guy who, simply by sharing the name, sullied the good name of my deceased grandfather and other fine chaps name Carl. And so Carl, since you're not the typical used car salesman (his continual use of the phrase "I'm not a typical used car salesman" so made him the typical used car salesman), I'm not going to be the typical dissatisfied customer who's going to slam you on his blog or on his Twitter account.