Car = Sentient Entity?

I'm sure I'm not the first person who has a love affair with their car. A symbiotic relationship between driver and machine. The strange imprinting one makes on steel and fiberglass that transforms an inanimate object into an entity.

I'd like to think I take good care of my car. I never let it run out of gas, I wash it occasionally and dry it with microfiber cloths, and I make sure maintenance is performed on it when it's due. In turn, my car takes me to work, takes me on the road, takes me wherever I ask it to go. The sound system feeds me music and the environmental controls keep me comfortable. In every aspect of this machine, it performs exactly as I expect it to. I know this car.

Last Tuesday when I was driving home from work a guy rear-ended me. It was a craptastic finish to a long and stressful day. I just got it back today. They had to replace the bumper and fix the rear body panel. Even though my car is a late model 2007, apparently it has the body of a 2008 and it took a couple extra days to order the new bumper from the manufacturer. I have the "sport" edition so the bumper has an extra "spoiler" or lip at the bottom of the bumper.

When I picked my car up today, it was my car, and yet it was not my car. There was a rock chip on the bumper that was not there anymore. I felt like I was picking up a stranger. It most definitely was my car, because the scrape on the front bumper was still there, the scuffs in the interior were still there, and the red luck charm that dangles from the rear view mirror still hung where I left it.

After driving around a PT Cruiser (by the way, I know now why so many grannies love that car) for a week, I was so happy to climb into my newly fixed car and drive off. Except it didn't feel right to me. What is going on here? The brakes feel a bit squishier than when I dropped the car off. I guess I'll check the brake fluid level and if it's low I'll add some brake fluid.

I'm sure in a few days I will become reacquainted with my car, and everything will be fine.