First, the good news: my Beefeater Gin mirror arrived safe and sound. After reviewing a few more on the Internet I'm convinced I did as well as I could have hoped to do.
Next...once upon a time my pal Scott gave me some of the best advice I've ever gotten. As a teenager I was telling him about some hysterical rant my parents had gone off on over some trivial matter, and he said, "Don't load `em up with ammo! You always load `em up with ammo so they can shoot you down!" It had honestly never occured to me that you didn't have to impart every detail of your life to your parents.
Something that neither he nor I ever accounted for, though, is that in their world, anything is "ammo." And yes, it's still ammo even now that I'm nearly 36 years old.
The latest example was yesterday evening. On the way to a post-Christmas dinner I for some reason mentioned I had a loose windshield wiper that needed replaced. Yes, this was ammo! My dad said, "You gotta get that fixed right away! Take it to the dealership! I'd go into work an hour late so I could get it fixed! I wouldn't drive with it like that!" He then repeated these sentences in various combinations for the remainder of the night, never switching topics.
I had never changed a windshield wiper before but I was certain tons of GED-wielding retards changed windshield wipers in a snap every day. Why should I be the one dipshit who couldn't do it? There was no way I was going to waste time sitting in the waiting room at Marietta Toyota to get a friggin' windshield wiper fixed! The cashier would probably laugh at me! I knew I'd never hear the end of this until it was done, though, and it was due to rain soon.
Emboldened by the knowledge I had previously changed all of the lights on my car successfully, on lunch at work today outside Quizno's I decided to take a closer look at how the wiper blade went on and off. I was tickled to get it off, but getting it back on was another thing (now that I look at it, I think a plastic hook thingy had broken). I decided to leave it wiperless and drive to the nearby NAPA store.
Preparing to get back in the car I gently brought the bare metal hook down within an inch of the windshield and let it go...and that was a mistake. WHACK! It left a divot and about a five-inch vertical hairline crack at the bottom of the windshield. Sigh...does every fucking thing have to be so complicated? I got so bummed I didn't even eat at Quizno's. Indeed, I thought, perhaps I'm so mechanically inept even snapping on a windshield wiper requires $40 of professional assistance!
The NAPA counter man got the right wiper for me easily (a whole $9), and once they saw me fooling with it in the parking lot a guy offered to do it for me. Saving my self esteem, he didn't seem to have any easier of a time with it than I did, but it snapped on. It also whacked the windshield when he let go and he looked startled, but fortunately the rubber thing didn't lengthen my new windshield "character mark."
That was a true drama, but I finally even let myself off the hook for cracking my windshield. The car has already gotten lots of love marks despite my best efforts, and maybe as Keith Richards said, "It's the price of an education." At least I had tried.
I have not loaded my parents up with ammo about putting a crack in my windshield. I'm sure my dad will stare it down sometime and bring it up on his own. In the meantime, all quiet on the homefront.
Did I mention my Beefeater mirror looks nice?
Anonymous said...
Art said...