Kill me now and call it euthanasia…
They say that necessity is the mother of invention, which is why I recently found myself watching a Youtube tutorial regarding how to change a lawn tractor battery. Let me be the first to declare that a mechanic I am not.
Three days previous to the Youtube tutorial I had commissioned a neighbor to jump start the tractor, thinking the battery was dead because it had sat over the course of the winter. Alas, it was not the case. Despite cutting the lawn for two hours, and as logic would dictate, re-charging the battery in the process, it was completely dead the following day. I turned the key, hope springing eternal and was rewarded with the sound of wretched silence. Not even a cough. Nada. After several choice cuss words, I abandoned all hope and drove to Sears.
You’d think the battery would still be under warranty being less than a year old, but no. Three months is apparently all you get. Bev, the male sales person who sold me the lawn tractor last May, made a fair pretense of being sympathetic to my plight, but simply would not concede that a battery should last longer than a season without crapping out. While I was pondering the question of why any mother would think it a good idea to name their son Bev, he suggested I meet him at the outdoor compound where he would divest one of the new tractors of its battery, seeing as they currently had none in stock. Sixty dollars later, plus HST, I was homeward bound with the precious cargo.
After my safe arrival at my domicile, and after watching the Youtube tutorial in the comfort of my livingroom, I realized I did not own a wrench. In my own defense, I do own a hammer, a screw driver, and an axe, none of which are useful in loosening bolts. Rather than making the twenty minute drive back to town in a westerly direction, I remembered that the service station down the road located in the opposite direction, being east, boasted a tool section. I decided to chance it because it was closer than going back to town.
Nope. No wrenches. Now I was that much further from town having traveled in the opposite direction. I remembered that the next teeny-tiny town heading in the same easterly direction had a small, family operated hardware store.
A grumpy looking proprietress followed at my heels as I gazed at the shelves. Nothing vaguely resembled a wrench, and when I inquired where I might find one, she advised that while they were in fact a hardware store, they did not carry wrenches. I bit my tongue lest I sound sarcastic.
On to the next even smaller town. I checked the local gas station’s hardware section,which contained an assortment of painting supplies, rope, glue, and engine oil, but of course, no wrenches.
Back inside my PT cruiser I checked my pulse. It was racing. I swore through clenched teeth and headed further east to Souris.
At long last I found a hardware store that actually carried wrenches among other things, and the wrenches abounded in various sizes and shapes. I played the dumb card and several male employees clad in red shirts bearing Home Hardware logos who were hovering around the cash register in the pretext of working assisted me in selecting just the right wrench for the job. I smiled and left.
Back inside the PT cruiser I re-checked my pulse. Normal.
Loosening the bolts and changing the battery was easy. Nothing to it. However just as I was finishing up the job, my wrench inadvertently made contact with something that caused a spark and then an ominous popping sound. A plume of smoke followed. I swore again and dropped the cover of the tractor hoping I wouldn’t blow myself up when I turned the key to start it.
As they say in the movies, all’s well, that ends well.
