With a belly full of fish-fried chicken and biscuits, I went home discouraged but hopeful. How hard could it be to get a turn-signal fixed? I asked some of my more mechanically-inclined friends, who informed me that the bulb probably just needs to be replaced. Really? I didn't even know cars used bulbs! So as soon as I got home, I went and unscrewed the light bulb in my room and put it in my car. (Just kidding. I knew you had to get a special car bulb for cars, silly.) I was more determined than ever; I was going to change that bulb and drive that dang Lumina right back to the DMV and ace that test! And there wasn't nothing nobody could do to stop me!
A trip to Pep Boys and several hours later, I discovered that either changing a bulb on a car is a lot harder than changing a bulb in a house, or the bulb wasn't the problem. With the help of Zeke D'Avy and Chad Brown, I eventually figured out it was the latter. I called Charles and told him the problem. He took it to his mechanic. A few days later he called me:
Charles: I got some bad news about the car.
Me: What's that?
Charles: It's gonna cost exactly 1 arm and 1 leg to fix the dang thing.
Me: What?! An arm and a leg? I thought that was just a figure of speech!
Charles: Nope.
Me: That's a steep price, just to fix a blinker.
Charles: Listen, I'm willing to spot you an arm if you can come up with the leg.
Me: Meh.
Since we didn't want to fix it, and since it didn't seem like a good idea to drive around with no back left turn-signal (have you ever tried using the hand signals? It feels really stupid for some reason), we decided to just sell the car.
To be completely sincere for a moment, I felt like giving up at this point. Yeah, I get an "F" for Perseverance 101, I know. But I was so annoyed with the whole situation, and I just started to think it wasn't really worth it. The gas money, the insurance money, the have-to-fix-stuff-before-you-even-officially-own-the-freakin'-thing money. In fact, have you ever considered the undeniable, historical truth that 99.98% of the greatest people in the history of the world never owned a car or had a driver's license? Seriously. Moses, Gandhi, the Buddha, Jesus, the list goes on. I just wanted to be like Jesus.
As it turns out though, it's too late for me to give up now. (Sorry Jesus, but I'm going to have to trump you on this one.) Over the last few months, I've learned the truth of what Charles told me all those years ago. Whether I realize it or not, whether I admit it or not, I will probably never feel like a mature adult male in my society until I get that driver's license. Besides that, I've learned over the years to value the act of carrying out a goal to it's completion. When we give up, even though it may seem like the wise thing to do in the moment, we lose something. We can become habitual giver-uppers, who can never quite seem to finish a task. Well I don't want to be a giver-upper anymore, and I'm going to keep trying until I have that license in my hand, if for no other reason than my own dignity and self-respect.
And as always, the moral of the story: stay in school, kids!
P. S. I'm going to try to take the test again this Thursday. Pray for me. = )
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