The Wiper Blade
A little backstory so you know what I’m working with. When I was a young man, maybe 10 years old, my Dad thought it was a good idea to introduce me to the Great Outdoors. He was raised in the country around farms and horses and gardens and fields and hogs and chickens. I was being raised on skateboards and music played by long haired musicians. So Dad thought I needed some mountain air in my lungs. Maybe it was his way to move the needle a little bit. So he became an assistant scout master and I became a boy scout.
We had weekly meetings where we discussed things like fire starting, food foraging, and shelter building and citizenship. The other costs and I were not riveted by the merit badge conversation, but the energy picked up in the room when we started talking about the camping trips. I had never camped out before, unless you count the pup tent in the back yard that had an extension cord running from the house into the tent. I remember being anxious about the upcoming trip, but also excited.
About 15 of us found our way out of the city into the woods and we started setting up camp. The more experienced scouts looked like they knew what they were doing, so I just followed dad around and did what he did a few seconds after he did it. Pull on the tent wires: yup, they’re solid. Stow away the food; yup, it’s stowed. Sharpen a stick. I thought maybe that was for self defense but later learned it was for the hot dogs.
The sun started to set and so the group activity was now “looking for firewood.” Dad and the other dads were settled in around the fire now, so I couldn’t follow him around and do what he did. Dad said, “Go find us some firewood.” So I spun on my heels and headed into the woods like I had done it a thousand times. I had already worked out that I wasn’t supposed to cut down a tree, so I looked for wood on the floor of the forest. I saw some other scouts coming back with an arm full of limbs, none of them bigger than their arms.
“I can do better than that!” I soon found a log that weighed maybe 20 pounds. It was about a foot long and about as big around as a bongo drum. Bigger than any of the other wood I saw headed back to camp. So I picked it up and headed back to the fire. As I approached the fire Dad and the other dads turned to look at me as I presented my log offering to the fire gods. Then dad asked me a question in front of everybody; a question that I did not know the answer to.
He said, “Larry, is the wood waterlogged?”
Waterlogged??? That was the first time in my entire existence that I had heard that word. I tried to break the word up in my head; sometimes that helps with knowing what a word means. Water. Logged. Beads of sweat were starting to form on my forehead, and not from the heat of the fire. The group was waiting for my answer. I could feel panic start to rise up in my stomach when I thought of a solution: Water sloshes! Of course! And so I shook the log back and forth while holding it up to see if I could hear water in the log. Ergo waterlogged.
I shook the shit out of the log, making gyrations that would have made Elvis proud! My eyes shot wide open! I could hear water sloshing in the log!
“Dad! It is waterlogged! Listen!” And I repeated the experiment. There it was again; the unmistakable sloshing of the water.
The other dads seemed to be rather amused at this, which confused me as I thought they were all woodsmen. Dad, on the other hand, was the only dad that didn’t seem entertained. He lowered his voice just a little and shared a remarkable insight with me: “Larry, that sound is coming from your canteen.”
So now you know.
I recently bought a “new” used vehicle. The buying process was OK, but I was on a budget and there were some things I needed to get fixed on the vehicle. Small things like a new cup holder, a couple of dents I wanted to get pulled out. It was the right year, make and model, it just needed a few tweaks. So I bought it with the idea that, over the next couple of months, I’d take care of the little things wrong with the car in favor of the right mileage and price.
I thought I had checked the vehicle out pretty well before I bought it, but you can’t check everything, right? So one day as I was backing the car up it was raining. That activated the rear windshield wiper automatically. I’m not sure I have ever used a rear windshield wiper on purpose, but I could see in that moment the benefit of such a device.
But the problem was that it made this awful screeching sound on the back window. I needed a new back wiper blade. So I immediately thought, “Well, just another thing I need to get fixed.”
A few days later when I had some time I got out my manual to find the part number and I looked up a few places where I could get this specialty wiper blade. I compared prices with online companies. Then I stopped at two auto parts stores to see if they carried it (I like buying local if I can). They didn’t carry it. I stopped by the dealership to see what they charged for the wiper blade. As you might guess, they wanted too much. So I went back online and read a few reviews of the various manufacturers.
I had just about made my final decision (by this time I know you think I have too much free time on my hands). I was about to click the “buy” button and then I thought I ought to at least go measure it to make sure I was ordering the right wiper blade. Measure twice, buy once, right? I was proud of myself for this thought, having measured only once in my life many times only to face the consequences.
“Ok, Mr. Wiper Blade, you’re going to catch me shaking a log today!”
I got my measuring tape from the garage and went out to take a meticulous measurement for the replacement.
That’s when I found the existing wiper blade had a plastic cover on it. The kind of plastic cover that comes on new wiper blades. When I slid the plastic cover off, I discovered a brand new wiper blade attached to the wiper arm.
I have repeated the two mistakes I made with the log and the wiper blade maybe a thousand times in my life. I have made these mistakes in vocation, relationship, parenting, house repairs, diagnosis, treatment, cooking, and, most regrettably, self evaluation. I’ll list the two mistakes for you now to help you avoid the error of my ways:
I did not take the time to examine my problem closely and carefully.
I did not get someone else to look at it.
I wonder what pain or hardship you might have avoided in your life if you had followed those two steps?
