Things You Can Do When Your Car is Being Repaired

I’m way too ambitious

This is totally my car. In addition to the fact that it’s not really a car you can take up into the mountains and camp out of, it’s super low to the ground, making it hard to get in and out of, especially for this guy who already has one artificial knee and is about to get a second. Photo by MercurySable99 on Wikimedia Commons.

The other day, while waiting in one of two left-hand turn lanes, my driving neighbor motioned to me to roll down my window.

You know, when you take your hand and act like you’re rolling down a manual window?

In the last three generations, no one has rolled down a manual window, but what other kind of motion would you make to signal someone to roll down their window? Flash your index finger?

It’s a notoriously long light, so coming out of my coma, I turned down the Rihanna song I was enjoying and “pushed” my window open.

“Bla-bla-bla-bla-bla” is all I heard. Then I shouted, “What?”

He, in turn, shouted and said, “Did you know both of your brake lights are out?”

My response was, “Goddammit! I just replaced those!” I thanked him, and we both made our left-hand turns.

Then I got super paranoid. I have a gig job delivering pharmaceuticals, which I was doing at the time, so it’s not like I could stop and get it fixed, particularly on a Sunday when not one place that services automobiles is open.

I knew I was going to get rear-ended because no one could see that I was slowing down to stop. So I drove very slowly the rest of the…