Check Engine Chronicals

Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.

That’s not one code.

That’s a whole damn family reunion.

Sitting in the driveway with a scanner in my hand,

Reading letters, reading numbers I don’t understand.

One says sensor, one says circuit,

one says something’s gone wrong,

Got the dashboard doing backup vocals all night long.

Search the first one,

now I’m scrolling through a thread,

Somebody says it’s simple,

someone says the motor’s dead.

Every forum got a genius with a different diagnosis,

Meanwhile I’m counting pennies,

trying not to lose my focus.

Seller called it dependable,

I call it camouflage,

All these hidden little secrets underneath the garage.

Paid for transportation, got a puzzle with a key,

And the check engine light keeps checking up on me.

Check engine chronicles! (Read that code!) Every little warning got another episode!

Check engine chronicles! (Here we go!) One light on the dashboard,

ten more down the road!

Beep-beep, blink-blink, tell me what you mean,

Got a Christmas tree blinking on my instrument screen!

Check engine chronicles! (What a mess!) Car’s taking pop quizzes and I’m

failing every test!

Called a shop for an estimate,

they asked me what it does,

I said, ‘Brother, grab a chair,

let me tell you what it was.’ Got a raspberry from the

tailpipe, rattle from the floor,

Four-wheel symbol plays peekaboo whenever I shift forward.

Guy said, ‘Bring it in,’ I said,

‘What’s the price to look?’ He gave me half a number and

my stomach started shook.

I ain’t scared of fixing problems,

I’m just short on repair,

Can’t replace a mystery with money that ain’t there.

So I write down every symptom,

put the codes beside the sound,

Try to sort the little warnings from the ones that shut me

down. No more guessing at a sensor just because the scanner spoke,

Cause a code can point a direction,

not the part that’s actually broke.

Check engine chronicles! (Read that code!) Every little warning got another episode!

Check engine chronicles! (Here we go!) One light on the dashboard,

ten more down the road!

Beep-beep, blink-blink, tell me what you mean,

Got a Christmas tree blinking on my instrument screen!

Check engine chronicles! (What a mess!) Car’s taking pop quizzes and I’m

failing every test!

Got a notebook, got a pen,

got a plan for the week,

Got a squeal, got a clunk,

got a sound when I creep.

Got a budget looking thin,

got a job I gotta chase,

Got a stack of little problems trying to win a bigger race.

I can laugh about the dashboard,

I can joke about the heat,

But I’m not about to gamble on a brake beneath my feet.

Need the facts before the fixes,

need a price before I pay,

Need this rolling pile of questions to survive another day.

Then the muffler starts a solo like a trumpet full of bees,

And the neighbors start to stare through the curtains at me.

I shut the scanner off,

hear a rumble from the back,

Guess tomorrow’s got a soundtrack and it sounds like that.

Okay.

Codes written down. Tomorrow,

we figure out that exhaust.

…Yeah, I heard you.