The Golfie has had an eventful two weeks. Last week, she got a new belly cover. (Yes, that is an official VW part name.) I went to the carwash, see, and something came loose. So the giant piece of plastic that covers the underside of the car was hanging down in the front, attached only by a screw or two at the back, which left me basically shoveling up the 405 freeway to get home and to the dealership service center.

Before that, she got a new windshield. I’m not allowed to tell the story here, but it began when I removed the windshield wiper arm and couldn’t get it back on. It’s on now, keeping the rain off of a new windshield.

The windshield replacement meant the discovery of a mini time capsule of sorts. Early on in our relationship with this car, we realized we would have to rethink Steve’s trademark and suave method for storing parking garage entrance tickets with a flick of the wrist on the dashboard. If you put a piece of paper on the dashboard, Golfie eats it. It slides quickly down the front toward the windshield, where it is lost forever. Our greatest casualty was an entrance ticket from the LAX airport parking deck. After a thorough search of the car and his pockets, Steve had to pay a painful 30 dollars for 15 minutes of parking. The attendant told him that when he found the ticket, he could come back with the receipt and get a refund. We held onto that receipt for a few weeks in vain hope, knowing in all reality that the ticket had fallen into the abbyss that is The Ticket Hole.

That was last March, and do you know what the service people found when they replaced the windshield? Yes, the ticket! Alas, it was too late to get the refund, but hey, there it was. Like a shark with its stomach cut open to reveal all of the missing cameras and sunscreen bottles and pets of all of the beachgoers of all time, the Golfie was made to return what was never hers to eat in the first place. Make no mistake, we love this car. We just don’t love that she has a ticket hole.