The apprehension is unreal.

I’m sitting on a hard plastic chair cradling a Styrofoam cup of coffee made during the Clinton administration. I told myself I’d be cool, but no. I’m trembling. It’s OK, though, because there are two other guys in this tiny waiting room and they’re all a-quiver as well.

“The last time,” one of them says out of the silence, “they found a problem with my wombat stabilizer pin.”

“Is that a real thing?” asked the other man.

“I dunno. What am I supposed to do? Question them?”

There’s a clang of metal on metal from the work area. The growl of chains as one of the bay doors rolls up.

“No,” the second man says. “I guess not.”

It’s inspection time in Lewiston.

Actually, it’s always inspection time. Those stickers on our windshields are supposed to be good for a year, but who are we kidding? Those coveted squares of paper are treated with some exotic chemical that makes them expire quickly. Linger at the mall too long and the inspection sticker you just got is suddenly overdue. It hasn’t been a year. You’d swear it’s been more like three weeks.

But what are you going to do? Question them?

I thought so.

It doesn’t matter who you are, either. You can be an 85-year-old woman who plays the organ at her church and keeps a Mother Mary figurine on her dashboard. You can be a lumberjack with missing thumbs and a criminal record. You can be a NASA engineer who designs rocket ships and who knows a combustion engine as well as he knows the contours of his own body.

Doesn’t matter. The inspection people have us all by the short hairs. They can pass you or fail you on whims. They can make up things straight out of a Looney Toons cartoon and you can’t do diddly about it.

“Sorry,” The Man will tell you, using a jackknife to pick at grease beneath his thumbnail. “You got a leak in your upper palpitator and your roughshod platypus spleen is worn through.”

What are you going to do? Question them?

Some people question them. These are men and women of great courage, comparable only to Kamikaze pilots and the hopelessly insane. I know such a person. He is a hulk of a man who used to be an automotive technician but who now works in Internet technology.

The fellow took his car into one of the more popular automotive centers in the area, flipped through magazines while a tech looked over his ride and then found himself faced with a grim diagnosis.

“Sorry,” they told him. “You’ve got a bad spring in your right gnu valve.”

Actually, they told him he had a leak in his muffler, but it comes out the same. Big fail. You just forked over 12 bucks and the sticker on your windshield is still the wrong color. Outside the garage, cops are circling like vultures because they can actually smell an expired sticker. It’s like carrion to them.

So, the IT guy took his car home, got it up on a lift and inspected the exhaust. He found no leak. He went back to the auto center and told them their tech had made a mistake.

Can you imagine it? Questioning the guys with the yellow Motor Vehicle Inspection Station sign out front? That’s like telling God he made you too short and ugly.

The auto guys sent him away. So Mr. IT went to another inspection station and had them look over his car.

“Exhaust is fine,” they told him. “But there’s a problem with your brake line.”

We’ve all had this experience. Two inspection stations, two completely different diagnoses. The Sun Journal did an expose on the matter just a few years ago to confirm it. There is a stunning lack of consistency in this system we are all subject to if we want to keep our tires on the road.

And yet you barely hear of anyone protesting or questioning their results. We just hop from one garage to the next like junkies shopping for doctors who are liberal with the prescription pad. Twelve bucks here, 12 bucks there. A bad fallopian connector at this garage, a faulty scrod wire at that one.

You pay the money, get unnecessary work done and mumble about how, back in your day, all you had to do was buy Gunther, the blind mechanic out on 201, a six-pack and he’d give you a sticker. You recall, in a quiet way, that in better times, all you needed was a working horn, three out of four working lights and tires that showed vague signs of tread if the light was good.

I remember those days. I had a Chevy Vega that breathed blue smoke, had trouble going to the left and occasionally burst into flames, but I got a sticker on it.

Alas, those days have passed. And now I sit in this tiny waiting room with a couple of men who might be big and bad on the outside, but who are, in here, timid children trying to ingratiate themselves to a stern teacher.

I’m the first one called to the counter. I stand up and approach warily, flashing a weak smile at the others as I go.

The mechanic has a sheet of paper he’s eager to show me. I nod as he explains the problems one by one. In the back of my head, I’m wondering if I said something or did something to offend him. Damn it, I should have rehearsed more at home. I should have brought a box of doughnuts or some cigars as offerings.

It’s too late now. On my way out, the other men shake their heads sadly and wish me luck. I’d wait to see how they make out, but who has time for that?

Like so many others before me, I have to replace my wombat stabilizer pin and God knows those things don’t come cheap.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. You can mock his lack of automotive knowledge at [email protected].