have hammer, will travel

We’ve been starting the car every morning these past five days to make sure we still could. Don’t go anywhere because if we actually drive the car, once we turn it off, it won’t start again until the next day. So we just go out, start it, come back in and say “It started.” Makes us feel like we have options.

Today we were actually going to drive it. The plan was I’d take Lady out to her client site so she could train someone and I’d come back and drop the car off at the repair shop to get it fixed.

Only it wouldn’t start this morning. Of course it wouldn’t start — our life is one of those random acted discontinuous road trip movies and in the movies you know darn well if the car’s needed, it ain’t gonna start: it’s a plot device to drive up drama (which it did).

Called the mechanic and he suggested I go out and hit the starter with a hammer. Told him I didn’t know what a starter looked like or where it was located, but I went out anyway and lightly tapped a couple odd looking units here and there, got in the car, and it started. Turned it off, turned it back on, and it started again.

Came back up, got Lady, took her to work, dropped the car off at the mechanic, walked home, drew a hot bath, and soaked in successful silence.

Once small victory for the peasants.

On the walk home I was carrying the hammer I’d used to start the car, along with a copy of Sartre’s Nausea I’m rereading I’d brought along in case the car died and I got stranded. I stopped to get a candy bar and wondered as I walked in if they would find my having a hammer threatening. As I lay the hammer on the counter next to Sartre and the candy bar, the clerk said, “Cool hammer. I need to get me one like that.”