CHICAGO, IL—When people say you need to "change your oil" in your car, it turns out that everybody somehow magically knows that you're supposed to use a specific kind of oil. But there are dozens of kinds of oil out there, right? Oil is oil. Why can't vegetable oil or coconut oil or olive oil do the job just as well as "motor oil" or mecha oil or whatever? Why can't I—or anybody else possessing an ounce of imagination—lubricate an engine with, say, a sweet-smelling non-polar liquid for a change? So what if the oil becomes "denatured," whatever that means. My car—I mean, any car—would run fine for weeks on essential oils mixed with Canola oil. Hypothetically, of course, since clearly no other person in the world is "dumb" enough to even try. I just don't get why it's such a big deal or why my wife got so mad. It's not like putting sugar in the gas tank or a potato in the tailpipe or something.
If you were to find yourself in the unenviable position of having put non-motor oil in your car, you would ultimately receive nothing but scorn for your stroke of genius, trust me. At first everything would seem fine, your car would run just like normal, except the sweet smell of cinnamon or mint or lemon would fill your engine, depending on which one you try first. Your wife would praise the change and finally start to respect your sense of car cleanliness, thinking you had had it detailed or something. But then the "honeymoon period" would be over and reality would force its way under the hood.
As time continued to pass, your car's engine would grow perceptibly weaker, slowly acquiring damage as the experimental lubricant stopped doing its job. Those jerk mechanics probably wouldn't stop laughing when you took the stupid car in to get the initial symptoms checked out, either. Cut me some slack, I don't laugh at your amateur attempts to be a journalist, pal! "Have you never heard of motor oil?" they would query in a stupid mock-innocent tone. "How old are you, like 40? How have you survived this long being so incompetent?" others might ask. They'd all act like they'd never heard of anybody doing that before, and they'd even call you mean names like "Can't-ola" or "Tin Man" or something, especially stupid Todd with his fat face. It would hurt, but not as much as spraying yourself in the face with pepper spray.
Since you've been using your genius idea for a while and failed to take your car to the shop for a few weeks after you noticed problems because the kids needed something stupid like attention, apparently your car's engine is shot. And apparently insurance doesn't cover "negligible abuse" of a vehicle. Of course I'm not bitter. Why would I be? It's not like I've actually ruined another car with the wrong kind of oil. I'm far too educated and intelligent to fall prey to creativity on that scale. To all of the poor souls out there that don't have the "common sense" to know that canola oil isn't meant for the inside of your vehicle, you've been warned.