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How Essential Is Your Car’s Air Conditioning To You?

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Now, this isn’t a question for those who choose not to own a car. Since the car is non-essential, the state of its air conditioning is irrelevant. I wouldn’t classify the failure of a car’s air conditioning as an emergency, but when mine decided its time was up, I ended up classifying it higher on my priority list than I would have predicted I would. I’m not out of debt yet, but my car’s air conditioning was fixed this past weekend.

A month or so ago, my car’s air conditioning seemed to not get quite as cold as it used to. Over the course of the next two weeks, it rapidly deteriorated, and eventually just completely stopped working at all. My spouse drives my car in the evening when I am at work to take the kids to their activities (since the car seats are installed in my car) and he began to complain about my lack of air conditioning. Which I told him wasn’t that bad. My first car, which is the only car I had before this one, didn’t have air conditioning at all and I survived with it for 12 years, after all.

But then my kids started getting really sweaty and sticky riding in the back seat, and the littlest one (who is 21 months) started looking really pink every time we rode in the car. I tried rolling down the windows more, and that worked a little, but then I caught my son’s hand in a window rolling it up. I didn’t completely close it on his hand, but I did pinch it a little, and he being 4 and with a speech delay, he doesn’t always follow directions very well. My brain could see this happening again, and so I changed my mind.

My spouse took the car in this weekend, and $181 later, the air conditioning is fixed. It had a major leak caused by a nut completely corroding away. The major leak could have been guessed at, since it deteriorated so rapidly. So that’s $181 less towards debt elimination this month. But I am okay with that. And the kids don’t get so sticky.

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