Revealing Things People Knew

Revealing things people knew

Andy Rooney once said that a writer’s great pleasure was revealing
to people things they knew, but did not know they knew.

What I am about to reveal is actually a fact people already knew,
but I am going to do it just to clarify my recent entry about my car,
and to acknowledge the comment by my classmate D.J. as well.

First I mentioned my almost 18 years old Acura Legend was still in
a “prime” condition. Then D.J. indicated that cars usually lasted for
much longer time in the sunny and dry places such as California or
Mexico, as compared to those in the northern countries where is
cold and snowy.

Although Acura Legend is considered to be a pretty durable car,
what I did not mention in my prior entry is that my car has a
relatively low mileage as it has been mainly driven by my spouse
mostly for the purpose of grocery shopping and attending Sunday
church program. Besides, she has been a good driver and the car
has always been kept inside our garage when not being used.

This car fact also applies to people’s driving records. Once a wife
proudly said to her husband that she had an absolutely perfect
driving record, ie. no ticket or accident, during her 40 years’ driving
as compared to her husband, who had had quite a few accidents and
some tickets during the same time period. But she did not realize the
fact that she had driven the car very infrequently and always for a
very short distance inside the town, as composed to her husband,
who had commuted to work out of town every day, and took her out
in his car for pleasure ride during the weekends and holidays.

Yeh Tze