The Loneliness of a Solitary Bumper Car
And the narrative value of mentioning a car wreck without providing any other details
Welcome to the first entry in Oddities of Facebook Marketplace, our new series at Assigned.
Why are we writing about stuff people are trying to unload instead of, you know, sports? Because our paid subscribers overwhelmingly told us to!
The internet offers you, the consumer, a limitless supply of new, untouched items. You can purchase almost anything you think of if you’re not too picky about your sourcing. Amazon will ship you a brand-new dental chair. Home Depot will sell you a giant booth designed for painting a car. There are multiple websites dedicated to the frozen mouse and rat trade.
Someone else can tackle the larger meditation on what having all that commerce at your fingertips means for our culture of consumption and so on – because I’m here to look at the other thing the internet can help you spend money on: decidedly broken old stuff.
Today, I have two examples from Facebook Marketplace to share. These are the kind of items you could find on eBay (or Craigslist at a different time). On Mark Zuckerberg’s messed up flea market, however, they turn the mind into a detective and a fiction writer, swirling with questions and imaginations.
Vintage Bumper Car
Here’s the description of this item, which is listed at $1,500. “Vintage THLE Super Bumper Car
In good condition, missing steering wheel and electric pole. Otherwise pretty much complete. Comes with new diamond tuck red interior fabric to restore interior. Very heavy must bring trailer and help to load.”
What project did this owner have in mind that they’ve since abandoned? If “appears to have been attacked by an electric sander” is good condition, does that mean a bumper car in bad condition is actively on fire? Can it even be considered a bumper car in this state, or has it become an armored loveseat?
But those are questions about the past. We should also look to the possible future of this item.
Here are a few things you might be able to retrofit this bumper car into if you don’t have an entire bumper car arena into which you’d like to integrate it.
Use it as an uncomfortable and impractical gaming chair
Remove the chassis and mount it over a riding mower to make lawn maintenance incredibly whimsical
Apply the right plastic lining to the interior and create a cooler, a small soaking tub, or an uncomfortably large nacho cheese dip container
Put it in your backyard, plant vegetables in it, and make unbearable “bumper crop” jokes once the harvest comes in
I am not in the market for any bumper car, so perhaps I’m being unfair. This seller has done the market the courtesy of providing an accurate description of the item’s limitations. If I were the kind of person who needed to buy a fixer-upper bumper car, I would not feel misinformed or misled.
But that kind of person has to fall into one category - someone who already owns at least one other bumper car. This isn’t like acquiring a single tennis racket where you can find someone to play with later on. Solitude is contrary to the very nature of the bumper car; it only makes sense as part of a bumper car ecosystem. Is this seller ridding themselves of the runt of their bumper car litter? Was this some kind of state fair Gift of the Magi, where one partner sold their clown faces that fill up with water to buy a bumper car and the other sold their bumper car to buy the spray hose you use to shoot those clown faces?
So many questions, so few answers. But none of these questions are about the essential nature or quality of the item available for purchase, which I cannot say for our second listing.
1998 ford 7.3 powerstroke motor with automatic transmission in 1 ton 2wheel drive
Coincidentally, this vehicle costs the same amount - $1,500 - as the bumper car. Here’s the unabridged description: “was running fine when wrecked.”
This is almost certainly a decommissioned UPS truck, though there are no other pictures provided to confirm that suspicion. The condition is listed as “Used-Good,” which is consistent with the “running fine” subsection of the description and seemingly in conflict with the “when wrecked” clause. We’ll get to that shortly.
I should note that the Minnesota license plate is throwing me for a loop. This vehicle is listed for sale in Nashville. Is it far from its home, or has it relocated pending registration in its new state?
That matter, however, is far less confusing than “when wrecked.” So much possibility packed into two words, and no elucidation whatsoever. No photos, no hints of what damage the truck suffered, and no hint on whether you will need to tow this vehicle away if you buy it. Not even a mileage listed for a truck that was manufactured nearly thirty years ago!
Perhaps you think this is poor business. Nobody’s going to spend $1,500 on a truck that was in some unspecified accident and may or may not run properly. You may be right, but consider how refreshing it is to have this level of mystery in your online shopping experience. Everything else we buy is detailed to the extreme. Here are the specifications of the overalls you’re considering. Here are 237 reviews of those overalls, many of which contain complaints about circumstances extremely particular to that reviewer. Here are those overalls in a dozen different photos, including on a man with proportions entirely different from your own. Here is what people who buy these overalls often purchase in addition.
There is no such hand-holding for this 1998 possible UPS truck. It invites you to accept that our world can never be fully comprehended. Just as you will never know another person’s thoughts, you will never know if this truck has a snapped axle.
If you accept your own limits (and you have $1,500), who knows what kind of surprises await you!