Chapter 5 "Dude, Where is My Car "

Every time my mother asked her second son, Dungi, about what had become of her two cars, I was always reminded of Ashton Kutcher's movie "Dude, Where's My Car?" In that movie, two best friends woke up and were unable to remember what happened to their parked car. So was the case with my mother's two cars, a Toyota Kijang that she and my Dad bought themselves, and a BMW sedan that my Brother bought for them. She could not find where they were. Until she was dead.

Through several car loan programs, Dungi upgraded the cars to newer ones. But after several iterations and my Dad's passing, the cars slowly became his, registered under his name, and leaving my mother with the question of "Dude, Where're My Cars?"

Dungi would come with a lengthy procedural answer when my mother asked what had happened to her cars. He would explain how her two cars had been turned into two better and newer cars. The conversation between them about these cars happened a couple of times over several years, up until her last year of living on this earth. So a typical conversation between them would go something like, "Dungi, so where are my cars?" My mom would ask.

"Oh, I have upgraded them to a newer Kijang and a blue BMW, remember?" Dungi would answer. "And then after that, I upgraded them again to yet a newer Kijang and a black BMW. Remember Mom?" He said again. And before my mother could answer, he added, "Then finally through a very good car ownership program from my new work, I have upgraded them again into a Mercedes and a Camry." Then Dungi would smile proudly for his skill in car trading.

My mother would then ask, "So the Mercedes and Camry belong to me?" And at that point, a comedy started to write itself.

"Of course not Mom. Because I financed all those upgrades." Dungi would say, starting to get nervous.

"So, what is my ownership portion in those two new cars then? I must have some ownership there, after all it started with my two cars, and the BMW was bought by your brother specifically for your Dad. And didn't your brother pay for some of the earlier upgrades of both cars? On my behalf? My ownership can't just disappear like that even though you paid for some of the later upgrades. Plus, you never told me that those upgrades would make the cars become 100% yours?" My Mom started to get annoyed.

"But I assumed you knew and agreed already. Plus, you are free to use either car whenever you want Ma." At this point he usually became defensive.

"Dungi, don't start being cheeky. I would prefer my old cars to stay intact should I know that the upgrades are causing me to lose my ownership entirely. Plus, since you treat these cars as fully yours, your sister cannot use them anymore. If they're still my cars, all my children would be free to use them," said my mother. At this point, Dungi usually would keep silent. His face would turn red, not because he was embarrassed, but because he felt attacked.

But many times he would be saved from the situation by my Brother, who if he happened to walk into the room would joke as usual. "Dude, where're Mom's cars?" That was what my Brother would say while laughing, uttered in the same way as in the movie "Dude, Where's My Car?" Tension would be relaxed, and again, my mother and my Brother would easily let Dungi off the hook.

I once listened to an audiobook by Jack Welch, the celebrated CEO of GE for his management skills that turned GE around from a losing to a highly profitable company. In that audiobook, he told an interesting story about how two cultures gave different meanings to the ownership of cars. There was once a global management meeting where all GE managers from all parts of the world met. In that meeting, a manager representing the GE business in the Philippines suggested that GE open a car loan financial services there. Many were against the idea, arguing that the majority of people in the Philippines were so poor that they could not afford primary needs like housing, let alone a secondary need like owning a car. But the manager representing the Philippines argued that the Philippines' culture had their priorities structured differently than the US'. While most people in the US saw car ownership as a secondary need, the Philippines saw it as their identity, social status, and their declaration of success. They'd rather lose their house than sell their car. Losing a car, or having the lending institution repossess the car, was a social humiliation greater than being homeless. In the end, he was proven right. GE financial services for car loans in the Philippines became one of Jack Welch's success stories.

I couldn't be sure if I retold the story as it was in the book. I might even be wrong on the details altogether but the gist of the story was somewhere along that line. So, the story as I remembered it, I guess also applied to people here in Indonesia. Especially to Dungi. He put car ownership above morals and decency. He took advantage of my mother's and Brother's leniency toward his conduct because they loved him. I thought that was the wrong kind of love to give, for that only brought him to a worse state where he could rather unscrupulously ignore my mother's bewilderment of losing her cars. While he, over time, convinced himself that the cars were his all along.

Dude, Where Are My Mom's Cars?