She walks across the street to her bronze station wagon, which she inherited from her parents—a rusty malfunctioning machine whose windshield wipers activate every time you turn left. Last year, the door fell off when she tried to open it, and she had to take out a loan to repair it. Her parents neglected the vehicle, and she followed suit; in their household, car maintenance was viewed as a profligate waste of money, exclusively for people with disposable income. The manifestations of this intergenerational neglect are always unpredictable, often funny, never affordable.
