Saturday, February 14, 2009
YET ANOTHER TEST OF MANHOOD THAT I HAVE FAILED MISERABLY
One thing about the neighborhood where I live--the heads of households show a complete mastery of such things as table saws, blowtorches, and cars. When a temperature light kept flashing on the dash of our VW Jetta, I told the wife I'd cross the street to ask our neighbor, the car ninja, for some advice. I dreaded asking this guy--I knew what I was in for. After my first antifreeze question (which was basically, "What is antifreeze?"), my neighbor asks me a number of things about the car, including whether it uses red or green antifreeze. They come in different colors? Who knew?
Apparently there's a lot the average person should know about antifreeze, and was it just me or could I detect a withheld sneer of contempt from my knowledgeable neighbor. So he asked me to pop the hood. Twenty minutes later, when I had accomplished that, he took a look and gave me some advice about what I needed to do. And he didn't say it out loud, but I could hear it like a whisper of the wind among the trees: You dare call yourself a male?
One thing about the neighborhood where I live--the heads of households show a complete mastery of such things as table saws, blowtorches, and cars. When a temperature light kept flashing on the dash of our VW Jetta, I told the wife I'd cross the street to ask our neighbor, the car ninja, for some advice. I dreaded asking this guy--I knew what I was in for. After my first antifreeze question (which was basically, "What is antifreeze?"), my neighbor asks me a number of things about the car, including whether it uses red or green antifreeze. They come in different colors? Who knew?
Apparently there's a lot the average person should know about antifreeze, and was it just me or could I detect a withheld sneer of contempt from my knowledgeable neighbor. So he asked me to pop the hood. Twenty minutes later, when I had accomplished that, he took a look and gave me some advice about what I needed to do. And he didn't say it out loud, but I could hear it like a whisper of the wind among the trees: You dare call yourself a male?
# posted by toner_low @ 9:29 PM 
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This kind of post amazes me, because you and I have what has become something of a city mouse/country mouse dichotomy... as we both predicted over twenty years ago. That's not say that because I live in the sticks, I somehow possess wisdom you lack... hardly. But do the outskirts of big cities lack places like quick oil-change establishments? They usually check all those fluids for me.
It's true, I'm pretty naive about cars, since I've never owned one, and don't regularly drive. The current VW is really the wife's; I drive it maybe 2 or 3 times a month (the last time I drove to work would have been 1997). In the case of this post, I left out some details that might make my own helplessness with cars easier to understand. If you can answer the following, then you truly are ahead of me in this.
1. What's the difference between antifreeze and coolant?
2. For how long can you operate a car with the temperature light flashing?
3. If you need to replace antifreeze in the coolant tank, can you use water?
4. Where can you get the antifreeze that a VW Jetta uses? (Answer: NOT at a standard garage.)
5. Can you mix green and red antifreeze, and if not, how much damage to your car are you risking?
6. Where does one go to get the special antifreeze used by a VW Jetta, if standard service stations don't have it and you can't use normal green antifreeze?
7. What if the VW dealership whence the car was purchased is no longer servicing VWs?
My point is, my neighbors all have a handle on these questions. I didn't know these questions existed.
Maybe it's just me, but going to a paid professional to fix or buy something nearly always has a way of turning into a far more complicated undertaking than I anticipated. Let's say I go to buy, I dunno, a spatula; the guy at the spatula store will inevitably ask me whether I plan on flipping pancakes or omelets with my purchase. Because, he'll tell me, every idiot knows you don't dare flip pancakes and omelets with the same kind of spatula and he knows someone who flipped an omelet with a pancake spatula and subsequently lost the use of his legs, so MAKE SURE you do your research! So then I have to slink back home, spatula unbought, and rethink the whole errand. Seriously, these trips happened all the time when I was fixing up the house. I'd go to one hardware store to buy a bolt, get a lecture from the guy at the cash register, then go to another place because I couldn't bear another dose of scorn, and by the end of the day I'd have visited five hardware stores and answered 800 questions just for that friggin' bolt.
1. What's the difference between antifreeze and coolant?
2. For how long can you operate a car with the temperature light flashing?
3. If you need to replace antifreeze in the coolant tank, can you use water?
4. Where can you get the antifreeze that a VW Jetta uses? (Answer: NOT at a standard garage.)
5. Can you mix green and red antifreeze, and if not, how much damage to your car are you risking?
6. Where does one go to get the special antifreeze used by a VW Jetta, if standard service stations don't have it and you can't use normal green antifreeze?
7. What if the VW dealership whence the car was purchased is no longer servicing VWs?
My point is, my neighbors all have a handle on these questions. I didn't know these questions existed.
Maybe it's just me, but going to a paid professional to fix or buy something nearly always has a way of turning into a far more complicated undertaking than I anticipated. Let's say I go to buy, I dunno, a spatula; the guy at the spatula store will inevitably ask me whether I plan on flipping pancakes or omelets with my purchase. Because, he'll tell me, every idiot knows you don't dare flip pancakes and omelets with the same kind of spatula and he knows someone who flipped an omelet with a pancake spatula and subsequently lost the use of his legs, so MAKE SURE you do your research! So then I have to slink back home, spatula unbought, and rethink the whole errand. Seriously, these trips happened all the time when I was fixing up the house. I'd go to one hardware store to buy a bolt, get a lecture from the guy at the cash register, then go to another place because I couldn't bear another dose of scorn, and by the end of the day I'd have visited five hardware stores and answered 800 questions just for that friggin' bolt.
This is why I am an unmarried, vasectomized apartment dweller. Equity, shmequity. Yes, it is a hollow, loveless, and empty life, but I don't have to worry about things like that. My towels are getting ready for their annual washing, too.
All seriousness aside, I have none of the answers you seek, but I'm aware of the purchasing phenomenon you're talking about. I used to really run into it at health food stores, seeking, say, a bottle of vitamin c. They'd always talk me into dozens of jugs of concomitant and allegedly necessary products, all designed to make the other stuff work. And they wonder why I became a skeptic.
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All seriousness aside, I have none of the answers you seek, but I'm aware of the purchasing phenomenon you're talking about. I used to really run into it at health food stores, seeking, say, a bottle of vitamin c. They'd always talk me into dozens of jugs of concomitant and allegedly necessary products, all designed to make the other stuff work. And they wonder why I became a skeptic.
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