Engine died.  Not good.  One day it was running and doing it’s job happy in the water and just enjoying being an outboard motor and the next…….well, it started with a nasty cough.  Went on for a few days.  But, it seemed to carry on – more or less like normal – once a few minutes were spent hacking and spewing.  Then the cough got worse and finally, it just couldn’t get out of bed, as it were.  Couldn’t plane.  It could go.  Slowly.  It just couldn’t go well.  There was no joy.

At times like this, I take the old mix-master into Sonny-the-outboard-mechanic and he works his magic.  Usually I am, once again, reunited with the heavy, powerful inanimate object with which I have an intimate and co-dependent relationship.  Not this time.  “Engine’s dead!”, said Sonny sensitively. “Gotta get a new one.”  I reeled. 

“Oh, Gawd!  Tell me it isn’t so!  What happened to the old gal?”  

“Well, they’re outboard motors, ain’t they?  They break.  Yours followed that tradition faithfully.  It broke.  Water got in.  Went all over where it shouldn’t.  I just closed it up when I seen the rust, eh?  No point.  The outboard is dead!  Long live the outboard!”

Sonny is not much for sentiment.  Especially outboard motors.  And, it seemed at the time, outboard motor owners.  He likes me, I am sure, but Sally’s accompanying me doesn’t do the relationship any harm.  He likes cute.  But now he just looked at me like a repo man or tow truck driver rather than the life-giving doctor I had hoped to see. 

I may be a bit harsh in this observation.  He may have looked a smidge more sympathetic like the driver of a limousine at a funeral but, whatever, it was somewhat detached.  Ya know?
 
Basically Sonny was saying, ‘”It is your problem now.  An hour ago, I was kinda interested.  But not now.  Now I am bored of you”.   It felt awkward.  I didn’t belong there anymore.  I left.

But where does one go?  What does one do?  I was lost, aimless, confused.  Alas and woe overwhelmed me for a minute or two until I drove up the street and saw new outboard motors all shiny in the shop window.  ‘New’ might be good………….?

It is times like this that I hate government even more than usual.  Firstly the motor costs more than my first ten cars did — in total.  OK, first 15.  The price is in excess of $10,000.00!!  For that, you don’t get a car or even an umbrella to keep off the weather.  You just get the motor.   Period.  And then the government adds HST. 

They do this as if they haven’t added any taxes to any other part of the transaction already.  You know, like, “We have to tax this engine ’cause, like, it hasn’t given us anything!  Not lately, anyway.  And, like, even if it did when we taxed it coming into the country and then when we taxed the transporting of it and all that……….well, that was then and this is now.  Now we want more”.

I just can’t do that.  I know that outboards are the ultimate metaphor for life – death and taxes – but I will not go easily into that sweet darkness.  I may have to go but I am going kicking and screaming all the way.  I’m gonna look for second hand.  OK, maybe third.  

The only good part is that my undertaker is called Sonny.  Gives me hope for the after-life.