Savage Words: My car gives an unusual, perplexing message each morning

It’s been cold. No doubt about it.

I wrote in an earlier column last fall that I like winter. I embraced it. I looked forward to it.

But after last week…I give. When wind chills had Jack Frost cranking out minus-50-degree temps, it was difficult for me to defend one of my favorite times of the year.

I walked my dog around the block one day last week, and I couldn’t feel my face.

I looked down at her, likely delirious because of the extreme temps, and said to her a out loud: “Molly, why do we live in a place where when I go outside, my face hurts?”

My face hurt, my eyelashes crystallized when I went outside, and my patience was running thin each morning when I scraped what felt like an inch of ice off my windshield.

But if all of that didn’t remind me that it was indeed the deep part of winter, my car certainly did.

One morning last week, as I sat in my car and let it slowly warm up, I looked at the dashboard with a puzzled look.

LOW OUTSIDE TEMPERATURE

That’s what it said. Look, I love my car. I bought it last summer and it’s been a comfortable ride since day one.

I got it with some extra amenities like heated seats, heated steering wheel, back-up camera for when you’re in reverse. Things like that. I didn’t realize I was getting a ‘Low Outside Temperature’ message as well. Perhaps that wasn’t money well spent.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” is exactly what I said out loud as I stared at my dashboard with a perplexed look on my face as the cold temps had me physically shivering and shaking.

That night, I put my car in the garage and let it warmup in somewhat reasonable temps. My plan was to see if I could disable that annoying message from the dash.

Trust me, I knew it was cold. I didn’t need my car telling me the same.

But when I started digging into my car’s operating manual, I knew I had a better chance of building a rocket and flying it to the moon the following day than I did at disabling that message.

So, the message stays. If nothing else, it’s consistent. Every…single…day, the message greets me as I get ready to take off for the day in South Dakota’s winter wonderland.

And that’s OK. I can live with it. The car isn’t wrong – it definitely is cold outside.

But if it’s going to keep reminding me every day that it’s January in South Dakota, I better get an APRIL SHOWERS BRING MAY FLOWERS message in three months.