The Truck I’m not Going to Buy Makes me Unhappy

I’ll tell you what is depressing about the pickup truck I am trying to convince myself not to buy. It’s like a vanilla ice cream cone. It’s the Pat Boone of trucks.

I live in a place where the sun is insanely hot, due to the angle of incidence. That means anything left in the sun heats up fast. That means you have to be crazy to buy a car in a dark color. A long time ago, my dad was shopping for cars, and I had him stand between a dark car and a white car, with one hand on each. As he noted right away, the dark car was way, way hotter. That translates to a hotter car every time you get in it, and a longer wait for the A/C to start having an effect. So when you run a typical errand, the car may still be unbearably hot when you arrive at your destination.

What does all this add up to? A white or silver truck. For some reason, there are very few color choices for the model I like. It has to be white, silver, or something dark. Whoops, I meant “avalanche,” “radiant silver,” or something dark.

On top of that, I refuse to buy a four-door truck. Why do people who don’t drive employees to job sites get those things? I guess they build them for henpecked husbands. “Look, honey, the whole family can fit! No, no, don’t walk away! Wait! Wait!”

They’re more expensive than regular trucks, they have more parts to go bad, the beds are shorter, and they have lower payloads. Useless. But because so many people buy them, the “King Cab” version (not four-door) is rarer. And I have to have automatic, because I have decided I am secure enough in my masculinity to admit that manual is just plain inferior. And I demand the big V6. I drive so little, I don’t care at all about gas mileage.

Given those constraints, the only white or silver non-four-door Frontier in my area is white. And the interior is tan. Whoops, I meant “desert.” So I would be tooling around in a cheesy white truck with a tan interior. I can’t even find silver.

I don’t ask much in this life. Well, yes I do. Nonetheless, I think I should be spared the horror of a white truck with a tan interior. Can’t I at least get grey seats?

The Frontier is the only acceptable option. The GM, Dodge, and Ford small trucks are hideous abominations. The Tacoma has a payload one third smaller. The Ridgeline is what Harvey Fierstein sees in his mind when you say “truck.” It’s a joke with a bed that barely holds a week’s groceries. The bigger trucks would be hell to put in the garage, and I just plain don’t want to drive a battleship in Miami traffic. I don’t want to park it in Miami’s tiny parking spaces.

White. A white truck. I’d look exactly like Hank Hill, only without the narrow urethra.

The last few times I considered getting a truck, I managed to put it off until the sweating stopped and the urge went away. I hope I can pull that off one more time.