Saturday, June 25, 2011

MacGuyver's Dim-Witted Fourth Cousin

I fixed my car with a stapler!

Earlier this week, my car started making a bad noise.  In the mornings, when just getting underway, the car would make this awful rubbing sound the first few times I stepped on the brakes.  It would stop after a few minutes, so I thought it either 1) got better, or 2) um, well, I guess I hoped it got better.  Every day.

Jill and the girls and I were going shopping this morning in my car, and Jill heard the awful rubbing/scraping sound.  I told her about my crack diagnosis - "I think it has something to do with my brakes", and "it gets better." She doesn't subscribe as much to the leave-it-alone-and-it-will-fix-itself theory. 

"That's not a good noise.  You have to get that fixed."

I asked if she meant the problem, or the noise.  Because I could fix the noise by turning the radio up loudly for the first few blocks, and then it goes away by itself.  She meant the problem.

Fortunately, she is better at diagnosing car problems than I am.  When we got to the store, she got out, went to the front of the car, leaned down, and proclaimed "here's your problem!"  A car care savant.

It seems that a plastic guard had come partially loose from the bottom of the car and was scraping the ground.  Not nearly the potentially life-threatening brake problem I had worked so hard to repress the possibility of. 

And I could fix this!  After a few tries to find a new screw and bolt (maybe one try), I realized that there was a perfectly good, not-scraping-on-the-pavement piece of plastic on the other side of the underside (the under-otherside?).  So I took my handy, heavy-duty Swingline, and stapled the dangling plastic to the non-dangling piece.  Forty-three times.  Till I ran out of staples.  I fixed my car with a stapler!

It's not that I'm not handy.  I'm not.  Over the years I have grudgingly learned how to do many useful things around the house.  I've assisted with re-grouting things, I've replaced two garbage disposals (six years apart, thank you), I've built a compost pile from the recycled remains of the playscape (which I built in the first place).  I've even successfully replaced two ballcocks (look that one up - it's my absolute favorite home repair word).

But I've never ever been handy with cars.  My first one (a lovely white 1976 Celica) more or less blew-up because I didn't realize one should make sure a car has oil in it at all times.  In my defense, I was 15, the oil gauge didn't work, and no one told me anything about oil.  Still, likely my fault.  And even though I have avoided another explosion since then, in the thirty years since "Fireball" (every car gets a name), my skills have not measurably improved.  But I feel I've turned a new page, hit a tipping point, started a new chapter, fourth metaphor about changing directions.

I fixed my car with a stapler!

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