In marriage’s fantasy football draft of household responsibilities, ‘Car Stuff’ landed on my team. As did the lawn. And taxes. My wife, bless her, selected ‘Cleaning the Bathroom’ with her first overall pick because she actually likes the activity. She also gets the mail. Everything else— like taking out the trash and making coffee—we split. It’s reasonable enough and occasionally, we make trades.
My responsibilities have led me to Autozone six times since Sunday. It was a tough week for the fantasy team, and by Tuesday night, I’d nearly lost my mind, before my neighbor saved it.
This all started as a simple replacement of my wife’s car battery, before transforming into the need for two new battery terminals, and culminating at the root cause, the need for new battery cables. By 8:45PM Tuesday evening, I had successfully aligned the new battery and attached the terminals, but on our moonlit street, one task remained: fastening down the last battery cable. In the dark, yet seeing the light at the end of this four-day odyssey involving interactions with every employee at Autozone in Buncombe County, I had a single fastener in hand, about to screw the last cable into place, when I dropped the fastener. Oh God, I thought, No way. No way. No way! My hand combed every hole as I violently shook the vehicle, trying to jar it free. I shined the flashlight under the car and swept the concrete with my hands. No dice, the fastener was AWOL.
I raced to Autozone for the seventh time, entered two minutes before close, and received no greeting from employees I’d considered close friends by this time. Praise everything holy, they had one right-sized fastener left, and I was under the hood again by 9:15PM.
About this time, I’d crossed the threshold of task completion where you either get it done or die trying. And at this precise moment, Tammy, our next door neighbor, asked if I could use a hand. She didn’t wait for my reply, opening her toolbag and pulling forth a socket wrench and extension. Still pretending I had it locked down, infinitesimally moving the fastener downward in the dark, she said, “Ryan, bud…” pausing to gather my eye contact, “if you keep at it with that silly wrench in your hand, you’ll get it done by next week. Mind if I help, huh?” Relinquishing my pride, I stepped away and watched Tammy, with precision, wield the socket deftly into the dark space, and one minute later, have the cable fastened down. Circuit restored, the car started beautifully.
The experience reminds me of what I heard my attending say once to a patient: “Well, I suppose you could not go to therapy, as most people do eventually figure things out, but if you go to therapy, you’ll figure it out a helluva lot faster”.
In my thirty-four years, every relinquishment of pride has helped me somehow, which includes going to therapy. Here, on a Tuesday night at 10PM, it also made me a friend, got the job done a helluva lot faster, and got me back inside to watch the next episode of Love and Death with my wife.
To living a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
(P.S. With pride out of the way, you need to get the fork out of the garbage disposal, too, if you’re looking for happiness. The subject, an odd one, was the fodder for this week’s article, and even odder, is how I got running back in my life, by freeing that fork.)
