from May 18, 2008
Karma is the Eastern philosophy of good and bad revisiting the individual in a future life, or in a later era of the present life, based upon the deeds of the individual. In our Western culture, it is often expressed as “what goes around comes around.”
On Saturday night, Mr. Know-It-All posted an “advice” column on my account. How he gets my password is beyond me. I’ve tried all I could to stop him. I’ve changed my password on a rotating basis and changed my email, so how he hacks into my account is a mystery. And since he is posting under my account, I can only assume that all of his bad energy is, in a karmic sense, mine as well for failing to stop him. How else to explain what happened to me last week?
Mr. Know-It-All must have the bad karma of a fleet of convicts. I’ve never read anything remotely helpful in his columns. He is not always evil, but never can you put him in the good side of the ledger. So on Saturday night I read with disgust his latest repulsive blog. I have to admit, though, I laughed too. That more than anything is probably what doomed me. This particular blog was about car repair (so to speak) and the irony was not lost on me as the days dragged on. Karma had a field day with me.
Sunday was Mother’s Day and my brother and I were not doing to do too much for Mom because she was working that night. She’s always worked on Mother’s Day and we celebrate around it on the day before or after, and do some little things that day. One of the little things I was to do was drive her to work. We got into the car, buckled up, and nothing happened. The car didn’t turn over. It whined, made a whirring sound, and nothing. I assumed it was a dead battery. Mom took car service to work and I went back upstairs. It was a Sunday, and Mother’s Day, and late in the afternoon, so I decided to wait until the next day to fix it.
Monday morning I took the bus to work. It was a meeting day at work so when I returned him, walking home from work, it was almost too late in the day to do anything about the car. Around 4:30 I tried to turn it over. Nothing. Click. Whir. Cough cough whir. It sounded like it was about to start but never did. I was sure it was a dead battery. It was too late for a boost to do any good because my mechanic closed at five and I needed an oil change and an inspection too. I could change the battery myself but since my first stop would be my mechanic anyway I would just do it all at once. I locked the car and went upstairs.
Tuesday was another day of taking the bus to work. It isn’t too bad taking the bus. The stop is right across the street, the ride is less than ten minutes, and I listen to my iPod. Coming home, if the day is nice, I walk. This day I had to cover Liz and run chorus. This meant that I wouldn’t get home until almost six and thus wouldn’t be able, again, to take the car to the mechanic. Luckily, I called up and found out that he’d be there until six, not five, that day, and if I ended chorus a half an hour early I’d be out of work at five and home in time to get to the mechanic, if only I could get a boost.
(Chorus, by the way, was attended by nearly no one, and the two who showed up did little while I played the songs. One of the kids was new to the club and the other was busy with something else until after 4:30. It was easy money, sure, but I was losing time to get the car fixed. I was only doing this for Liz. I wouldn’t have said yes for anyone else.)
When I got home I got in the car and while I wondered who the heck was going to give me a boost I tried the car and it started the second I turned the key. It was a very warm day, the warmest of the week, and I figured that the battery was just a hair shy of having enough power to start, but the heat gave it a bit of a boost and it hit right. I revved the engine for almost ten minutes and planned to get straight to the mechanic. I turned on my phone, which was unsurprisingly off, and had three messages waiting for me. My mom was very sick and I needed to get there ASAP. I hated to do it, it killed me, but I shut the car off and left it for one more day. I hoped and prayed that it would start the next morning. I’d drop it off at the mechanic right before work and hoof it to work. I shut it down and, as a test, tried to start it again. Click whir whine. Nothing. I turned the key again and it roared right up. Strange, but it started two out of three times and I had high hopes.
Wednesday came and I reluctantly cancelled chorus. The car had not started that morning. I hated to give up very easy money and I didn’t want to leave Kathy in a lurch but I had to get this car running. I’d been giving a lot of thought to the battery, in particular who to get to boost it. There’s no one in my building that I know well enough to ask for a boost. I know some people who have lived there longer than my mother but they don’t drive. The ones who do I don’t know. As for friends, I don’t have a whole of drivers, or friends for that matter. From work, I could have asked Liz, and she probably would have said yes, but she was out of the country (and that was why I was doing chorus) and maybe I could have asked Kathy but she was still at work, was always busy, and I wouldn’t have felt comfortable asking her anyway.
I got to the car around 3:15 and it didn’t start but I didn’t expect it to. At any rate, I had a plan: I’d take out the battery, take the bus to Strauss and get a new battery, bus it back, put the battery in, and drive to the mechanic. Easy.
But it wasn’t. I’ve changed batteries before and it was never a problem. On my Chevy Lumina, the battery is below the reservoir for the windshield washer, so I’d have to remove that first. I brought my tools, popped the hood, and got to work. There is a strut that goes across the engine block, over the reservoir, held on with three hex bolts. I got out my socket wrench and tried to remove the first one. These bolts may never have been removed. They were rusted and didn’t want to move. They were so stiff that I actually broke my ratchet. Seriously, a tool snapped because of the bolt. Plan B meant I took out my crescent wrenches, found the right size, and after loosening the bolts by banging them with a hammer, took off all three by hand. It was hard and took awhile but I finally did it. Next stop was the reservoir. It was held in by two plastic tacks and a screw. The tacks had to pried off with a flathead screwdriver and it was harder than it sounds because they were on the verge of snapping and I had to be gentle. Then I had to get the screw. It was small but in a very tight spot. If I had the socket wrench it would have been a piece of cake, but without it I needed to turn the wrench an eight of a turn at a time and it took a very long time. This process was taking much longer than I thought. Eventually the screw came out. I tried to lift off the reservoir but it was partially wedged below a fuse box. As I tried to twist it out, I saw that a battery terminal was threaded through the reservoir. The more I looked the less likely it seemed I’d be changing the battery. I wasn’t going to start removing a fuse box and I didn’t want to try to fool around with the battery post. I hated to do it, but at almost 5 o’clock I called it quits and put the pieces back together. Again, it was too late to get to the mechanic.
I was physically and mentally beat. I was sure I could do the battery myself so it was a real come-down to discover that I couldn’t. Unable to change the battery, and having no chance of getting a boost, I did something that, honestly, I had wanted to do for months anyway. I got on the computer and joined AAA.
Thursday morning I took the bus again. I wished I could get a Metrocard like the kids. I cancelled the easy money chorus again and went home and called for a boost. AAA came by 3:30 and checked the battery. It was fine. Fully charged. I tried to turn it over and nothing. The AAA guy listened and told me it was not the battery, it was the starter.
So if I had managed to get the battery out, bought a new one, and replaced it, it would have done no good anyway.
The AAA guy did an old trick to start the car- he got a wrench and banged on the starter. It fired up and I drove to a new garage (not where I was planning to go) because the one he recommended was AAA authorized and I’d get a warranty and a price break. Amazing luck held sway, as the place was totally empty and I was in and out in under 45 minutes.
Bad karma had cost me $195 for the starter, six hours of easy pay at a good rate, and $12 in bus fare. All because of a stupid blog.
But it was not over. Karma was not satisfied.
Friday was the first day I drove to work that week. I was happy as I drove. I was parked a block from my house and had to pass it to get to work. As I passed, the road was clear in both directions. I had a solid green and the intersection was clear. There was a bus in the stop on my right and I kept an eye on it as I passed to make sure that it didn’t pull out. As I did this, a blur shot into the street on my left and hit me.
A teenager, maybe a high school freshman, ran out between two parked cars and she ran right into my driver-side door. Horrified, I looked back as I stopped and pulled over. She had bounced off the car, fell backwards onto her back and rolled onto the double yellow line. She only avoided being killed because she didn’t bounce into any traffic and she didn’t run in front of me. I would never have been able to stop.
When I got out of the car she had gotten up and ran to the bus and was about to get on when I stopped her. I made sure that she was OK and then made sure she knew how close she came to getting killed, that a bus was not worth dying over, etc etc, and she was scared, shaken, and most of all wanted to get on the bus. She was OK, the car was OK, I let her go.
But the car wasn’t OK. When I walked back to the car I saw that she had elbowed the mirror during the impact. The housing was fine, and that was good because the housing is the pricey part, but the glass had shattered.
After work I went to R and S Strauss on Bay Parkway. They had a slew of replacement mirrors but not one that even came close to fitting my mirror. They offered to order it but it wouldn’t arrive for 5 to 10 days. I needed one right away because not having a mirror means getting a ticket so I went down 86th Street to Auto Zone. They had nearly nothing on the shelves and the guy behind the counter was worse than useless. He didn’t even know how to use his own computer. Repeatedly he showed me a mirror and asked me if that was it. Repeatedly I told him no, that was a mirror for a van, and he showed it to me four times, always asking me if I was sure. I told him I knew the difference between a car and a van and if he’d like, I’d taker him to my car and show him. He declined. I very loudly said that “you don’t have a clue what you’re doing” and left. From there I went to the Strauss a couple of blocks away and they had a guy there who, to be nice, didn’t wan to work too hard. After way too long he told me he could order it, 5 to 10 days. I said no but I did buy a universal replacement mirror.
My next stop was my new mechanic, who advised me to go to the Chevy dealer down the block. I did. He also had to order it, but he guaranteed it to be there Monday afternoon. I bought it and it cost me $65 dollars. I put on the replacement mirror. It is a mirrored sheet of vinyl that I had to cut myself. It didn’t cut easily and it came out with very jagged edges and looks like it belongs on a Bedrock car. It is ugly and warped, the reflection is distorted, but it is only for a day more and it will keep me from getting a ticket.
Final tally:
Starter, $195.
Mirror, $65.
Temporary mirror, $15.
Bus fare, $12.
Lost pay, about $240 (pre-tax).
Total: $527, plus very nearly the loss of a child’s life.
Karma is a bitch.
Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride 
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