Car Shopping with A Family Counselor

By Darcy Thiel

I’ve heard it more than once or twice that people tend to spill their guts around counselors. Kinda like hairdressers, bartenders, massage therapists. It’s just what happens. I think with me, it’s more because I’m so damn intense emotionally that it draws it out of other people too. Now, I didn’t say I’m emotional, but intense with emotions. Who knows, maybe there is only a difference in my imagination.

Almost everyone I know hates car shopping. You would think it would be fun and exciting, but it is usually stressful. Spending that amount of money, combined with making a decision that will affect the next eight to ten years of your life, it’s no wonder it feels like too big a decision. Now add to it that most of us expect to be ripped off. We know they aren’t really going to give us their bottom line offer, even though they say they are.

My dad almost always had trucks, pretty much his whole life. They were his babies. He took meticulous care of them. We had talked about my possibly trading in his truck for a new car and I was worried I would break his heart. He was ok with it, thankfully. But now consider this intensely emotionally person taking her very recently deceased father’s pride and joy to be traded in. Even my boyfriend was like, “Yeah, I have to say, this was the most stressful and emotional car shopping experience I’ve ever had.” At our age, that’s saying something.

Let’s just say that after the first three-hour visit with a sales girl, she looked at me and said, “Remember, it’s just a car.” Then I informed her that wasn’t the case for my dad. It was his baby. I started crying with frustration because we couldn’t come to an agreement for a price. Next thing I knew, she was crying too. Oh, man!

Two days later, I am on speaker phone with the sales guy I have worked with for decades. He starts to have a mini meltdown with me due to the inability to come to a purchase agreement with me. I talk him down from the cliff and then he ends up disclosing some very stressful personal stuff. Love that guy, but only shopping with me would lead to this much emotion spilling over everywhere.

After way too many hours and days, I did finally get a vehicle. I ended up back at the place where I had the woman crying. She was off the day I actually purchased it, but I got to see her a couple of days later. The employees there have each other’s backs so they made sure she got her part of the commission. She certainly earned that one.

It’s cute, it’s safe, it has good mileage. I got a decent deal. Honda HR-V Sport. My insurance agent asked if I was having a mid-life crisis. (The car is red.) I told her I was just sick of the color black and feeling like I live in the world of death and dying. Besides, Dad’s truck was red. Doesn’t that count for something?