Baby, You Can Drive My Car (Beep Beep, Beep Beep)

Ok, so I know nothing about cars. I don't even like driving cars. I am terrified of driving and am a legit terrible driver as a result. There's a lot of things in my life that I am both terrified of and terrible at doing and those two facts feed each other which results in me being a 41-year-old woman with some pretty significant Life Skills blind spots.

Here is something I do like about myself: I try. I look up tutorials, I ask friends to teach me, I give these terrifying things a good shake. Mind you, that doesn't mean I actually learn! But, y'know, I try.

Which is why, when our car's "Change Oil" light came on, I asked our car enthusiast friend Mack to teach me how to do that. (He is also responsible for all the photos in this post! Thank you, Mack!)

This was actually the second time I had him teach me how to change a car's oil. The first time, I asked if he could walk me through the steps when his car needed the change, which he very patiently did about six months ago or so. I did get my hands on it- I unscrewed and re-screwed some bolts (You all will be so proud of me for only scream-yelping in surprise a couple times at the sound of the power tool turning on in my hand!) and I got my little grabby mitts into the guts of the car, fumbling around. Mack still had to do the stuff that took more effort to get in or get out, but, y'know, I was there, taking notes.

Time cruelly marches ever onward and now it was my little car's turn, but of course I didn't actually retain any of the knowledge he'd shared with me before-- besides, our cars are very different, so stuff was kinda in different places, so I wouldn't have been able to do it on my own anyway.

Once again, Mack graciously agreed to walk me through the process a second time- this time with me actually doing everything. And I did! I was on my back, unscrewing bolts and tying back these cable-things so they wouldn't be in the way of the oil stream and pulling out the old filter and putting in the new one and releasing the oil into the pan and putting in the clean filter and checking the dipstick and closing everything back up again! I did that! I did it!

When I lived in France during my college semester abroad, I remember this very distinct fatigue that would flood over me about halfway through the day. My brain was working so freaking hard to communicate and understand the simplest things in a foreign language. It was the mental equivalent of trying to walk through a knee-high field of mud. Walking on its own is so simple and low effort... until you're knee-high in resistance, and then, suddenly, you find yourself burning through your energy ten times faster than normal and your body is just like "You have used up all your power reserves. I am shutting down now to recharge. Good night." That's what living in the French language was like, my brain was working ten times as hard to do the most basic communicating and the fatigue was real.

There was a point when I was under the car, struggling to make a simple tool do its simple thing, and I felt that wave of fatigue wash over me. It transported me back across time to living in France and I realized, "Oh, I am learning a new language right now." All these bolts and cables and... I don't even know half the names of everything. All these pieces connect together in a logical way in order to function-- just like the way individual words connect together to create structured sentences to communicate so everything operates coherently-- and I am starting at the ground floor of this language. Literally! I was laying on my back on the floor as flecks of road crud fluttered down on my face as I struggled with tools I couldn't even remember the name of! In practiced hands, it would have taken no more than 30 seconds, I'm sure. For me? Minutes. Long minutes. Intensely-focused, long minutes with tons of grunting and sweating and slippage and turning the tool first the wrong way, then the correct direction but it didn't feel right, so back to the wrong way again, and then it slipped off again, and repeat.

Mack told me it typically takes him thirty minutes to change his oil.

It took me over three hours.

It took so much longer than expected that I had to miss a movie I'd already bought a ticket to see (Shoutout to Clinton Street Theater for re-running The Last Unicorn for one night!) and Mack had to delay picking up a thing from a friend that evening.

But, y'know what?

I changed my car's oil.

It totally worked.

Matt said the car was noticeably running smoother as he drove us home (He was the one driving because please don't make me drive, I hate driving).

I did it and it worked and I'm so friggin' proud of myself, you guys.

Will I do it again next year when it needs its annual change?

Probably not. Paying somebody else to take care of it in a fast and (comparatively) clean thirty minutes absolutely sounds like money well spent to me.

But, over the next decade, will I use any and every opportunity to loudly inform people that oh?, me?, yeah, I totally changed my car's oil, that's a thing I am technically capable of doing and could theoretically do again if I felt like it?

Oh yes, abso-fucking-lutely I will.

I may not always learn, but I do try.