It happened, of course, only four days before the world shut down for Christmas. I brought my extremely reliable Toyota Tacoma truck into my mechanic for some routine maintenance, an oil change and tire rotation. I had made the mistake of telling my colleague Kathy, who was looking into potential trucks for her son finishing college, that Toyota trucks are bulletproof and that I had hardly put a dime into mine. And when my sweetheart on the Cape shared what I considered to be unwarranted concerns about her much newer Jeep, I boasted that the 183,000 miles on my truck was only the beginning, that cars no longer die at 100,000 miles like in the old days, and that she was foolish to be thinking of her shiny red Wrangler as being old. If there is such a thing as jinxing yourself, I have only myself to blame. Speaking so confidently about my vehicle inevitably resulted in the auto repair debacle I have been faced with for the past week.