Smile-breaks
Flapping wipers
"What's that?" Paul and I are cruising home from a trip to Starbucks. All is well. Was well— until I decided to wash the dust off the windshield. Rainy season's here in Southern Cal but mostly we use our windshield wipers to wash the dust that's accumulated from Santa Ana winds or just plain sky bits that drop down from above. Oh! And don't forget the birds' contributions.
That's what I was doing as we drove along Dehesa Road. It had been a week of mishaps—some of which I mentioned in recent Smile-breaks. It was not time for another!!! Fate didn't agree with me, nor did my windshield wipers.
I'd been kind to them, giving them multiple chances to show their skills over the—years, maybe? Time to replace them? Seems like I just did. But the pandemic has me all screwed up on the timeline.
So. . . we're driving along, enjoying the music from Sirius, and I turn on the wipers, pressing the part that makes the wiper wash stuff come out. The wipers wake up and obediently start swishing up and around—well, halfway around. You know, how wipers do.
But now, all of a sudden a piece of rubber outside the windshield is waving frantically at me. Actually, it's waving at Paul. It's on his side of the windshield. Anyway, this long skinny piece of brown rubber. . . I know, it should be black, but I swear it was brown. As I'm looking to see what this flapping brown thing is, a scrape-scrape-scrape jars my eardrums. My string of mishaps is alive and well.
The skinny brown thing belongs to my windshield wiper and has left the metal part of the blade alone, to scrape where it should have been. So of course I have to turn the wipers off and I do. Good thing it isn't raining. But it's supposed to rain tomorrow and even if it doesn't, who knows when a bird might splat something on the windshield. Driver's side, of course.
Well, you know you can't turn on only one wiper, the critical one in front of the driver. It's all or nothing. Which takes me to Pep Boys that afternoon for a new set of wipers.
This is not my week—just like last week and the week before and the... Pep Boys looks deserted when I walk through the door. New shelving is being pushed around all over—empty shelving. A young, fresh clerk approaches. "Can I help you with anything?"
"I need windshield wipers for a Buick Regal," I say.
"I'm sorry. We're completely out of windshield wipers—not a one in stock, for any vehicle."
"Oh, thank you," For what? I turn to leave and then, halfway to the door, I stop. "Can you tell me who might have some?" He suggests AutoZone on East Main Street.
This time I use my head, and my cell, and call AutoZone before I head that way. Yes! They have windshield wipers—for every make and model of those things that get us around so handily. In fact, they have wipers for both the driver side and the passenger side.
Funny. I didn't know they sold them separately. But since one of my wipers was old and decrepit, I figured the other one would soon be waving bye to me, too.
AutoZone had the wipers—both of them—and the salesclerk kindly offered to put them on for me. Which he did. Well, he tried. Couldn't get the blade off. Had to get a screwdriver and screw it around a lot, but finally the wiper came loose and he put the new one on. Same with the other wiper blade and I was good to go. Yes. It rained the next day. I figured that was the last of my mishaps for the month of September.
It wasn't. Tell you about the next one soon. Here's hoping you have not a single mishap for the next twenty years.
