Recently I linked to an article that defined KISSASS:
I’ve stumbled across a gold plated example. Two broke snowflakes went on a van trip. As required by the KISSASS principle, one of them writes about it as if he’d been on the Bataan Death March. Even the title is ridiculous. We Tried to Do Vanlife Right. It Broke Us Down wallows in victimhood.
I’m fisking bits which caught my eye. Here’s the opening paragraph:
Wow! A cheap 12 year old Econoline has a lit idiot light on the dash? That’s never happened in the history of mechanics. It’s the end of the goddamn world!
Faced with this totally unsolvable situation, he has nightmares. Way to man up Lancelot! Chivalrously facing the challenges of the world; all for your sweetie. He handled it so well. Tearing up and freaking out is definitely the stud muffin way.
The KISSASS protocol has this:
Does our van based protagonist go downbeat on America? Hell yes! Ironically he can’t find much suffering in person. Failing to find Deplorables knife fighting for turnips on dirt roads in Iowa, he refers to other writers’ books; which he didn’t finish(!). He dredges from imagination this cheerful description:
Driving a van across America is the same as Frodo carrying the one ring to Modor. Our hero’s suffering is unbearable.
I’ve been there and done that… in a van no less. It’s called being poor. Being poor sucks. The solution is to get a job. Then, maybe, a better car.
Of course, these two weren’t exactly rock solid to start with:
That sucks. It’s also another of life’s lessons. If you want to have an adventure you’ve got to be physically and mentally fit enough to be an adventurer. If you can’t do it, don’t.
Maybe TV on the couch is as far as Captain Overwrought is gonna’ go. Not everyone is cut out to see the world. Some aren’t cut out to leave their parents. (The author was living in his parent’s house before and after the trip.)
So where’d this genius get his idea that the nomad life was cheap, easy, and blissful?
No shit? Instagram isn’t a unbiased resource for real world information? Are you sure? What about the Easter Bunny? That’s still real isn’t it?
Christ on a cracker. He called that one! He knew jack shit. He wasn’t just new to life; he was a hatchling who fell out of the nest. Dude took on an easy challenge. He wandered around a large peaceful rich safe society. He saw some of the best roads and cheapest gas on planet earth. This was his Waterloo? That’s what happens when you hit chronological adulthood without every once encountering/overcoming adversity!
Lord help him; he needs to grow a pair.
A.C.
P.S. Lest you think I’m callous, I’ve been there. I’ve done exactly what initiated Captain Overwrought’s navel gazing. He’s not the first dude to live in a rustbucket. He won’t be the last. It has been a cliche since Okies fled the dustbowl. Here’s the summary: it sucks. See what I did there? I summed it up in two words. It. Sucks. That’s OK. Unlike Captain Overwrought, I nutted up and adapted. I got a job and upgraded through a string of gradually less shitty vehicles; culminating in my current vehicle “The Death Wobble Express”. I have a much higher budget because I friggin’ earned it. It still sucks sometimes. Sometimes leaving the couch sucks. So what?
OMFG. AC, you sure this isn’t some sorta tongue-in-cheek humor piece?
“Rural emptiness” is also known as “beautiful wide-open spaces”. Whatta dumbass.
When the ABS lit up on my previous car and kept activating on one wheel at 5 mph on dry pavement, I did the responsible adult thing. I pulled the ABS fuse and ignored the light.
I’ve done it on a bicycle. In my 20s. Which means there were no GPS, cellphone, mapping software, etc. I didn’t have a credit card. I would get the state highway maps, stop and talk to people, I carried an old pup tent and a sleeping bag. It was adventure. Although I suppose I might have a panic attack if a check engine light had appeared on the handlebars.
A 1995 van was 22 years old in 2017, not 12.
Makes the lit idiot light all the more mystifying, if you ask me. ABS is supposed to last forever regardless of its maintenance or lack thereof, and if it breaks, I call a lawyer instead of a mechanic.
(I’m glad you read the story so I didn’t have to. I’m sick of reading stories by candyasses who glorify their own inability to cope with normal life. Recently I read an article [can’t remember where] by a biological male who first attempted to drive a car at 18 (really!), freaked out at the responsibility that goes with it, never drove again (he apparently lives in a big East Coast city), and decided, based on his own cowardice, that private autos should be outlawed and everyone should take the train. I’m sure you can walk to a train station, right?)
Oops… a math error! Damn!
I’ve had three vehicles with brake failures, one was heavy machinery on the road. The only one that worried me was the one that had an automatic transmission. They were all pre-ABS. I’ve had ABS throw error codes in very cold weather but only until reaching operating temp and a reboot fixed it.
I live 100+ miles from the nearest train station… there is no way in creation to get there without a car. Dipshits who keep talking about light rail and bike lanes will never understand the world in which I live; nor could they shoulder the responsibility of living here.
True story, I once had a debate with someone who insisted it was “impossible” my house has it’s own independent water supply and septic system. He was convinced that every house on earth is connected to a municipal water & sewer system. It’s all he’d ever experienced and he simply assumed it was universal. This guy was also opposed to the North Dakota oil pipeline. I asked him how he could be opposed to pipelines and still think every house in North America was served by a water & septic pipeline. You could almost hear the gears in his head grind to a halt; it looked painful. Poor bastard can probably walk to a train station from his house but had never heard of a leach field.
That’s impossible! Everyone lives right next to a train station!
I grew up in a house with well water and a septic tank. I never met anyone who denied the existence of such houses, but I’ve met some uninformed people. I once met someone who was planning to move to Mississippi upon her retirement from her job in Chicago, but she wasn’t sure how good the subways were there.
AC, I doff my imaginary plumed hat to you.
I had previously read the Perils of Pauline account of this unprepared couple of suburbanites and had a feeling of being embarrassed for them. I would have enjoyed the pips out of a trip like that.
I’ve done a few trips like that with equipment like that and funds like that… it’s pretty stressful when you’re young and stupid. Now I’m older and (arguably) have some wisdom. Also a $200 repair bill ‘aint the end of the world like it once was. Everything is a lot easier. (There are lots of repairs that cost far more than $200 and I can’t just shrug them off… but I think I’ve hit the age where nothing is “the end of the world”.)
“Working would mean stopping, extending the trip, spending even more money.”
What planet is he from? Apparently he hasn’t figured out the principle of ‘If you go to work you will come into money.’, not you will “spend even more money”.
I missed that one! “I can’t afford the expense of working.” Bwa ha ha ha ha.