Nea Fane – Un Biet Român Pripășit în America / A Hapless Romanian Stuck in The US

“You get a car! And you get a car! And YOU GET A CAR!” Irina declared three weeks ago, channeling her inner Oprah after her Favorite Nephew (TFN, if you’re keeping score at home) casually asked to borrow hers, for “just five days.”

The Other Favorite Nephew (TOFN) races his BMW every other weekend at the track. But since his fiancée drives an SUV nobody dreams of touching his track toy. Besides, you can’t exactly haul a toddler in a Z-Line.

“Can we manage?” she asked me, precisely three seconds after already handing over the keys.

“I, uh, well…” My brain and mouth staged a simultaneous shutdown.

“Communication is key!” she announced, sounding like a mid-morning motivational commercial. “Words! Use your words!”

“Just… tell him not to fix anything if it breaks,” I blurted, pure panic taking the wheel. TFN had spent the previous three years entirely carless for the sole reason that he kept trying to “repair” his own vehicle.

Now, I try not to bad-mouth family. He did return the car after four days, just in time for us to limp it to the dealership to fix the AC and, surprise of surprises, the water pump. At least he hadn’t tried to wrench on it himself. While he jetted off to a Cancun bachelor party, the car sat waiting, freshly serviced and ready to resume duty. TFN insisted he could have knocked out the repair in an afternoon, blissfully ignoring that the car was still under factory warranty and the work didn’t cost a dime.

After that, we didn’t see the car again. No news is good news, sure, but I worry about her. She was a pampered machine: washed, dusted, and sheltered in the garage round the clock. Now she sits exposed to the brutal Arizona elements, fending for herself in the wild.

Surviving on one vehicle out here is an Olympic sport, as evidenced by TFN’s household: his wife works in an office, while he works from home. Naturally, she takes their remaining car, leaving him stranded with a toddler who constantly needs shuttling around town. For us, it shouldn’t be that bad since we both work remotely. Yet lately, the master schedule sounds like this: “I need the car Tuesday, Thursday until 7:00 PM, all day Friday, and definitely Saturday. Oh, and Wednesday is non-negotiable.”

My primitive arithmetic reveals that covers five out of seven days: a solid 71% of our week. “I am just so thrilled we’re communicating,” I muttered to an empty room.

Somehow we cope, though grocery shopping has become an anthropological experiment. When I go to the store, I operate with tactical efficiency: I know what we need, which aisle it lives on, and the shortest route to the registers. Irina shops purely on vibes, wandering the aisles and gathering whatever whimsical item catches her eye. I’ll open the fridge, stand there scratching my head, and swear even the crisper drawer looks bewildered by what’s suddenly living inside it.

Then, on Good Friday, Irina answered the door to an eager young salesman whose sole purpose on earth was selling replacement windows. Out of the pure kindness of her heart, she booked an in-home appointment with “The Expert” for later that afternoon.

To keep a long, painful story brief: the initial estimate clocked in at $71,000. Yes, seventy-one thousand American dollars.

However! If we committed right then and there to unlock the “Just for You” neighborhood discount (because we are deeply charming people) the price dropped miraculously to $35,000, financed at a bargain-basement 9.9% interest rate. A frantic round of calls to neighbors, friends, and anyone walking past the driveway confirmed that if the quote sounded like highway robbery, it’s because it was.

Why mention the windows here? No real reason, except to note who is now spending their evenings furiously researching vinyl double-panes. Spoiler: not me.

Speaking of communication breakthroughs, I was prepared to detail what happens whenever Irina decides to cook Chinese food. It’s an uninterrupted stream-of-consciousness narrative. She recites every ingredient, narrates every chop, and fires off questions in rapid succession, questions that demand immediate answers despite lacking any apparent point. My suggestion that she films herself cooking was met with a very loud NO.

Meanwhile, I quietly managed to incinerate a batch of chicken wings.

“A total disaster,” she declared, eleven times, just in case the first ten hadn’t driven the catastrophe home. I genuinely had no idea chicken could be ruined in so many creative, structural ways.

Lesson learned: when it comes to the kitchen, my primary job is chewing.Anyway, somehow I stumbled upon these comedy bits, and I loved them, and I laughed so hard, and it seemed so spot on that I had to share them with you.