Sunday, May 20, 2012

Sometimes the Simplest Tasks are the Hardest

Hola kids! There are a few things that all men should be able to do. Simple, routine maintenance on the car is one of them. Things like change out your own battery, or change a tire, recharge the a/c and change out burned out tail lights or headlight bulbs. If you have the room and equipment (and a garage) you could probably do learn to do even more.

Well, this last week I started getting a warning light on my car. I had never seen this light before and wasn’t really sure what it was about. Then I realized it was telling me that I had a brake light out. This elicited a HUGE SIGH from me because what a pain the freaking ass changing out a light bulb is.

So, I took a deep breath and decided to change it out. I did get the car manual and look through it, just to make sure of how the bulb is changed. The manual shows how to change out dozens of bulbs EXCEPT THE FUCKING TAIL LIGHTS! It’s okay though the internet was there for me and a simple Google Search took me to a forum where I could confirm my greatest fears. I was going to have to tear the trunk apart to get to it.

I had to start by taking down the carpet lining. I just needed to take out about six screwed and pull out the plugs hold the lining up. No problem right? Heh. Each one of the screws was stripped and they just spun around and didn’t come out. Okay, only a minor setback as I’m pretty good at this. It just took a little time and patience and pretty soon I had enough of them out to pull back the lining to expose my next challenge.

All I had to do next was take off another half dozen nuts and pull the light assembly out from the back of the car. The nuts were all on very tight and standing and bending over the back of the car was starting to hurt my back, so I took a short break and sat down and drank some Gatorade. A man needs to know when to pace himself, ya know.

I went back out a bit later and got five of the six nuts off pretty easily. Yes, Matt-Man I said “got nuts off easily” you can stop giggling now. Anyhoodle, when I looked at the last one over in the corner I knew what was coming. I couldn’t get the crescent wrench I was using on it because it was behind a piece of metal that has a lip on it. No problem, I’ll just us a hand wrench right? Well, turns out I don’t have a wrench that fits it. Why? Because the Japanese don’t have the common decency to use the same form of measurement as Americans do.

So, now I’m out there practically standing on my head trying to get some vice grips on the little nut so I can get it off there. So far, I still haven’t been able to get to it. Over three days this simple task has taken about four hours, a dozen “Fucking You Infiniti’s” and probably a half dozen “God Dammit! It’s a fucking outrage that we have to have break lights anyway. The one in the rear window works, isn’t that enough you fucking Nanny State Pussies??!!”  


Nothing is ever simple, is it? Especially with this dark cloud hanging over my life. But, I guess I’ll find a way to finally get that last nut off there and change out this stupid light bulb. Maybe. I hope so anyway.

Jayman
Jayman3768@gmail.com
@Jayman_IWS


In other news today on I’m With Stupid we talked about people who were influential in our lives and the advice those people gave. Then we talk about bad advice we’ve gotten, took an great call from Rick in New Castle and then shared some great advice that we have learned with our listeners. All in all, it was a great and very happy show. Good times! 


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