The Full Suburban: Shopping for new Suburban a jarring experience

Our Suburban – the Full Suburban – is dying a slow, exhaust-filled death. We bought it used 6½ years ago shortly before Hyrum was born. It has served us well all these years, but since we have six kids and live in a semirural location, the Suburban has been aging in dog years.

Something that would take 15 years to break down under normal conditions takes about three when the Ditto family is given a crack at it. Windshields, headlights, rear window defrosters, upholstery, seat pockets, floor mats – none of them really stood a chance at a long and happy life once they were introduced to our extremely well-run household.

And so here we are at a crossroads. We can keep pouring money into our Suburban and holding off the inevitable, or we can cut our losses, sell it for cheap to some lucky family who enjoys finding hidden Cheetos dust in unexpected places and get a newer car that isn’t burning oil or hemorrhaging headlights.

While batting about our options, Logan and I headed to a used-car dealership a couple weeks ago to test drive a newer-model Suburban. At just a couple years old, it was still so perfect: shiny and white with clean leather seats and no mysterious odors to speak of, fully intact windshield, no footprints on the ceiling and not a melted fruit snack to be found.

Because of COVID-19 regulations, Logan and I were sent out for the test drive without the sales representative. Logan started driving first, doing all the things you’re supposed to do on a test drive like abruptly speeding up and slowing down, adjusting the air conditioning and testing the turn radius.

Eventually, it was my turn. I’m more of a gentle test driver, and after a couple minutes, I’d had my fill. I’d started heading back toward the dealership when a storefront caught my eye. “We’re right by WinCo!” I yelled, pulling the Suburban into the parking lot. “We have to go inside.”

Logan looked at me, bewildered. I explained: “The candied jalapeno peppers you like – the ones you put on pretty much everything you eat – are only sold in a couple places, and WinCo is one of them. We used up our last jar yesterday, and I’m not coming back this way any time soon, so we might as well get some while we’re here.”

Just for your reference, I’m pretty sure that the inability to resist running dull errands is a surefire way to know that you are fully entrenched in being middle age. Ten jars of peppers later, we were back in the Suburban faster than you can say “improper use of a test drive.” We pulled up to the car dealership just two minutes late.

“I’m going to grab the grocery bags from the trunk and stash them in our car,” I said to Logan. “I don’t want any side -eye from the salesperson for being the two lamest people on the planet.”

As I popped open the back hatch of the Suburban, I heard a faint rolling sound, and then a glass jar came tumbling from the trunk and shattered onto the asphalt. Glass shards and a mess of green, syrupy, candied jalapeno peppers pooled at my feet.

“Nooooo!” Logan and I both groaned, mortified that our little grocery stop had been outed – and also upset that we’d lost one of our precious jars of peppers.

“That jar cost $9!” I moaned as I bent down to scoop the mess into an empty grocery bag. I looked up sheepishly when our saleswoman came out of the building to greet us.

“Oh, my,” she said, eyeing the disaster at our feet.

“We stopped at the grocery store on our way back,” I admitted, feeling the full weight of my middle-age-ness. She didn’t seem to mind and even offered to get me a Band-Aid for the small cut I got on my finger while cleaning up the mess.

Really, I consider us – and the Suburban – lucky that we got away with just a scratch. That beautiful car came dangerously close to being baptized as a true Ditto vehicle: sticky, stinky and squalid. I think we’d better just keep the Suburban we already have.

Julia Ditto shares her life with her husband, six children and a random menagerie of farm animals in Spokane Valley. She can be reached at dittojulia@gmail.com.