Getting my hands dirty

Nothing makes me feel more like a man than when I fix something on my car. Well, I suppose I could think of a few other things. But in today's case, I changed a brake light that was out. My ingenuity was quite remarkable. I had been told by one of my students that one of the brake lights was out, but I didn't know which one. How to tell without asking my eBay wheel-selling neighbors? I thought for a moment and came up with an idea: wedge a shovel inbetween the brake pedal and the seat. Pure genious.

Sure enough, the right tail light was out. By now it was getting pretty dark outside, so I had to grab my flashlight. Outside in the heat of the night, flashlight in hand, working on my car, getting my hands dirty with the grease and grime of my 20 year old car. My dad would be proud. Have you ever changed any of the tail lights on an '84 Camaro? It ain't easy.

This experience reminded me of my experience in Guatemala when we struck a boulder in the road on the way home, bending the wheel and thus causing all the air inside the tire to escape. As we (we being myself, three children, and a few women) waited on the side of the road for Sergio, the family's patriarch, to come and change the tire, I kept suggesting that I could change the tire myself. As the only man in the group, I felt it was my duty to, well, do something. But the ladies kept insisting that we should wait for Sergio, that he was the expert on the minivan. Lo and behold, a minister pulls over. Do we need some help? he inquires. They didn't turn HIS offer down. And of course all the ladies ooh and aah as he changes the tire. He's the hero, and I just stand sheepishly on the side of the road. As the story gets recounted later that night during dinner, the women include me in the story, saying "The nice man stopped and changed the tire for us. And Sergio (an 11 year old boy) and Darron helped out by getting the spare tire out of the back." Yeah, I helped get the spare tire.