I have a hot wife and a hot car. One of them nags me, the other doesn’t. Can you guess which is which?

Here’s a question hint: Who wouldn’t shut up about her goddamn rear driver’s side tire having pressure slightly below normal every fucking time I turned her on? It wasn’t the one with the big, beautiful shoulders…

After a decade of toodling around in my 1997 Honda Civic coupe, I finally decided to grow up and get a big boy car in the form of a 2007 Acura TL.

I love it. It’s fast but not ridiculous, classy but not pretentious, elegant but not snooty, fun but not juvenile. It was the nexus of everything I sort of need in a car both image-wise as a professional and mental satisfaction-wise as a pain in the ass who refuses to fully accept his fate as a boring corporate douche bag.

The one thing I don’t like about it is just how fucking needy this car is. It’s like driving around in your high school girlfriend crossed with an insecure black lab crossed with a public service announcement from an overzealous surgeon general played over and over again.

When the weather got cold last fall, my tires naturally contracted slightly resulting in less than optimal tire pressure. I knew from times when I let my gas get too low that this car would alert me whenever I needed to fix something with not only a light, but a ding and a message displayed that said “LOW FUEL.” Fine. The Civic used to have a light. If we’ve progressed to the point where a light is insufficient and I need a ding and some verbiage to alert me I’m low on gas, whatever. Technology.

I didn’t realize this was the tip of the iceberg. At various (and different, mind you) points, all four of my tires required additional air. Since stopping to fill your tires with air isn’t always highest on your priority list, and honestly, nothing catastrophic will happen if you let this slide for a bit, the notices persisted. If this is limited to every time I turn on the car, okay.

But the bitch about tires is that while you drive the pressure shifts and adjusts, so each tire would drift below the level – ding! Back into optimal territory, the light goes off. Five minutes later – ding! Five minutes again – light’s off. Ding! Off. Ding! Off. Ding! /hangs self

God forbid you ever don’t wear your seatbelt. This thing will ding with the intensity of a rabid hedgehog until you acquiesce and shove the metal pin in the buckle like the angry doofus you are. And there’s no grace period either. When I’m pulling into my garage, sometimes I slip off the seatbelt to make a quick getaway into the house without talking to my neighbors, but my bitchy Acura doesn’t like that and chirps as soon as I unclasp. At least Kristin’s Saturn has the decency to assess whether or not there’s actual danger before clucking at you. My Acura is like that bitch across the hall from you at work who tut-tuts you when you walk in 4 minutes late.

I have service due on the Acura, and I’m reminded of that at least twice daily as I pile into my car. I’m worried this marriage to my car is becoming dysfunctional as I almost don’t take it to get serviced to be a passive-aggressive dickhole. I realize this is largely crazy and that I’m feuding with machinery, but fuck it, no one likes being nagged.

Which is why I’m happy to be actually married to Kristin. She doesn’t nag me. Instead, she drinks beer with me on our patio. That’s way better.