Run, Impala, Run

I was mildly unnerved when smack dab in the middle of the George Sellar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senator_George_Sellar_Bridge over the Columbia River at 5:11 pm my Impala stalled.  I had the sense to hit the hazards, kick the car into neutral, and escape the road.
After maneuvering into a safe spot I lit the Hunneypunkin Signal, and for once I got the superhero experience myself.  This was odd.  Generally I'm home being both parents and my own spouse while Hunneypunkin's out saving the world.
Hunneypunkin got me and the car home, but after hours and then weeks the solution eluded even his mechanicalousness.  The Impala would run like...well, an impala, and then without warning it would die, and it didn't give a monkey's butt whether I was in traffic or sandwiched between loaded semis.
I resorted to my motto.  I do what I can.  (Mechanics isn't it.)  I Googled.  (No, not Jeremy Renner pictures.  Stay on topic, people.)  Drivers all over the world wide web seemed to have had similar troubles with their early-2000's Impalas, and of all the fixes these poor suckers tried, the only one that seemed to work was replacing the throttle positioning sensor.  I had no idea what that meant, but I practiced pronouncing that term for six and a half hours so I could repeat it to Hunneypunkin without sounding like a girl.
I'm here to tell you that ADD isn't all bad, because Hunneypunkin's kicked in so he forgot all about the rule in The Super-Secret Manual of Pointless Instructions for Guys that girls can't know car stuff.  He picked up a little gadget from a wrecking yard which had my throttley sensorous positionish deally and two other important Impala pieces in it, for a fraction of the cost of a brand new sensory deally without any other Impala pieces, and behold! the part I'd suggested didn't fix the car, but the mass air flow sensor (one of the two other important Impala pieces) did fix the car.
That was a few years ago, Hunneypunkin and I have since traded careers (he goes to work and I hold the fort), and the Impala, still running (sort of), now carries him to work and back instead of me.  There are several million light years on the odometer and the transmission has low self-esteem.  The gas gauge keeps time with the speedometer, so the faster you go the more fuel you think you have.  But the engine is good and the dome light still works.  We keep discussing a new(er) car, but until we expand our penny collection...please, Impala, keep running.