1. After a week of assuming that the people
flashing their lights at you at night are crazy assholes, realize that your
driver’s side headlight is out and needs to be replaced. Recall someone saying
that replacing a headlight is easy. Wonder how long you can get away with
having just one headlight. Consider waiting for your father to get home and
asking him to ‘help you fix it.’ Experience rush of shame and decide to do it
yourself.
2. Watch a video on YouTube entitled ‘How to
replace the headlight bulb in your Cobalt.’ The camera stays far away while the
guy in the video switches the bulb but the whole thing is only about four
minutes long, so how hard can it be? Probably you’ll be able to figure this out.
3. Go to the auto store and walk around
rubbing your chin so it looks like you’re thinking really hard until someone
who works there asks you if you need help. Tell the employee that you need to
replace a headlight bulb, but try and make it sound like you’re trying to
decide between different kinds instead of admitting you don’t know what you
need. It’s important to never show weakness in front of the people that work at
the auto supply store. Once they hand you the right bulb, check out the
bulletin board beneath the cash register while they ring you up. Lots of
right-wing meme type stuff printed off the internet, and an article about Air
Force One clipped from the newspaper. Why is that there? The article lists
facts about Air Force One, how it combines work space and luxury. Do these
people have a problem with Air Force One? All the other things on the bulletin
board are really anti-Obama, so what’s up with this?
4. Once you get back home, open the hood of
your car locate the headlight assembly. It looks a lot different than you
expected. There, down under a bunch of stuff, you can see where the bulb goes.
Try and squeeze your hand down in there to see if you can get at it without
having to unscrew a bunch of bolts. If you’re doing this correctly, you should
remove a thin layer of skin from the top of your hand in the process. Decide
you will have to unscrew some bolts.
5. Get a wrench out of the garage. For more
information on this, please see ’23 Easy Steps to Finding Wrench in the
Garage.’
6. Remove the bolts around the headlight
display by turning them counter clockwise. Notice that the dog, inside the
house, is crying pitifully. She’s fine, she just wants to come out and see what
you’re doing. Try to ignore her.
7. Once the bolts are out, misplace them
immediately. Realize those weren’t the right bolts anyway, and start pulling
out more bolts. All the bolts. The dog is still crying.
8. Once all the bolts are out and vanished
somewhere under the car, grab the headlight assembly and pull it towards the
radiator assembly to remove it. This looked easy in the video, but for some
reason won’t come out. Yank harder. Notice that the bumper of the car is
slightly crooked, so the lip of the bumper is snagging the headlight assembly
and holding it in place. Keep yanking.
9. Try yanking from the other angle.
10. The dog, what’s her fucking problem?
11. Go back to yanking the headlight assembly
from the original angle, as if by now it will magically come right out.
12. It should now slide right out. Locate the
plastic locking tab on the wiring harness and pull on it until it breaks right
off, slicing across your fingers. Wipe this blood on your shirt and shout ‘Shut
up!’ at the house, as though that will quiet the dog.
13. Disconnect the writing harness from the
bulb socket and remove the black retainer by turning it clockwise, then run
into the house and scream at the dog, ‘Shut up or I’ll give you something to
cry about!’ Feel another rush of shame and fear that you’d be a terrible
father.
14. Go back to the car. Disconnect the bulb
socket, remove the old bulb, and slide in the new one. Hey, that wasn’t too
bad.
15. Now start putting everything back in
place. The blood on your hands will make this tricky, so be sure to stop and
wipe them off from time to time.
16. Now fail to jam the headlight array back
into place. No matter what you do, it won’t go. Kick is a little. Try from
different angles. Reflect on how your failure to preform this simple task in
some way speaks to all your other failures, that you can’t find a job, that
you’re all alone. You’ll never have nice things. You’ll never be happy. Kick
the bulb again, then turn and punch the wall of the garage three times (make
sure you do this with the cut hand, so the wounds open a tiny bit more and the
blood keeps coming).
17. Okay, the problem is that the bumper is
blocking it from fitting right. So start unscrewing the bolts that hold the
bumper in place.
18. Lose these bolts.
19. Realize there’s no God, that we are alone
in the cosmos.
20. Get just enough of the bumper loose that
you can pry the lip of it up with one hand while pounding the headlight into
place with the other.
21. Have old failures flash through your mind
in rapid succession.
22. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
23. Wait a minute, it went in. It went in!
While you were blacked out! Yes! Yes!
24. Crawl around under the car until you find
at least half the bolts, this should be enough. Right?
25. Get everything screwed in, stick the key
in the ignition, and try the headlight. It works! It works! Maybe there is hope
after all! You did it! You saw this task through from beginning to end! If you can do this, maybe you can be happy. Not to equate happiness with traditional male expectations, of course. It's more that your capable. Capable of fixing something. And it's been a rough year--shit, it's been 2 rough years. You've needed a win. Replacing a headlight bulb isn't quite the same as winning the lottery but you did it. YOU DID IT. You need to call someone and tell them about this. Is that weird? It doesn't matter. The light didn't work, and you made it work. With no help. With your own hands. What can't you do? WHAT CAN'T YOU DO?
26. Notice that the blinker on the driver’s
side is burned out.
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