You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Dead Battery on the Brand New Car.
The dealership says it’s a freak of nature.
“Just a bad battery,” the service tech says.
“It’s one of those European models,” the tow truck man says.
“It could’ve been sitting around for 3 years in a factory in India, you never know,” he says his lips puckering out of habit, as if he needs to spit chaw of tobacco from his lips that he is not currently chewing.
The temperature is 18 degrees.
“It’s this cold weather he tells me.”
Somehow I look past his 3rd grade tow truck education and think that this is somehow the fault of Global Warming.
It’s 18 degrees, I’ve got a brand new dead battery, and my brain goes to Global Warming.
I wonder: Is the world getting hotter?
Are oceans rising?
Are tornadoes more ferocious?
Are fires more pervasive?
Is the polar ice cap melting into the sea?
Scientists argue about the validity of these studies?
GLOBAL WARMING, they say.
Just the words are politically charged.
If you don’t believe in Global Warming then you’re a heathen.
If you do believe in Global Warming then you’re a tree hugger.
So which are you? Heathen or Tree Hugger?
I know I’m a guy looking at buying a brand new $500 battery to replace my brand new dead battery.
Global Warming I curse thee….
Perhaps the world’s climates are changing. The oceans will rise. Low lands will be lost. Fertile valleys will become dust bowls.
Perhaps it’s just a burp in the fabric of time, a slight aberration of normal climes in the Earth’s billion year life span.
In the mere truncated life of we humans, is a 25 year period of higher than normal temperatures really an indicator of an irreversible trend? What is 25 years in the life span of the Billion year old Earth?
It’s the equivalent of an ant hiding under a rock, under a glacier, under Mt. Everest.
While that ant is surely still a thing, it’s nothing compared to the mountain exists around it.
But we are humans with the attention span of an ant, and the focalization of whatever is immediately before us, so my dead battery, caused by a shitty production line in India, accentuated by 18 degree frosty temperatures could somehow be blamed on Global Warming.
It’s like blaming the ant for a avalanche at the top of the hill.
Global Warming kills Nashville man’s battery!
Perhaps it’s fueled by a gaseous veil of carbon dioxide sprayed into the sky, soiling the atmosphere from an industrialized society that likes it’s combustible fuels.
It sounds plausible, right?
While we argue about global warming.
I have one question.
Why am I so G** Damn Cold?
Maybe because it’s freaking cold outside.
Global Warming or not, It’s ice cold here.
I am shivering like a teen on a 1st date.
My skin’s so dry, my own fingers are snagging the threads in my tie like microscopic fish hooks of roughness.
The temperature this morning is in the single digits. Is 18 single digits? I don’t know.
I open the door to let the cat out. The icy winds pelt my senses.
The little cat pokes her furry face into the breeze, sniffs curiously, then her cat’s curiousity satiated, she retreats to the nearby heating grate on the kitchen floor to lick her paw.
How cold is it?
It’s so cold my car battery is dead.
Not just slow, or sleepy, I’m talking, plant it in the Earth and say a prayer, dead!
“Please start,” I say pushing the on button repeatedly pumping the brake.
I call the tow truck man.
I open up the garage door. His prehistoric metallic monster tills my vision. The mechanization and hard metal angels eclipse the sun.
The angry diesel sucking monster is backed in. The exhaust is blowing angry Global Warming inducing smoke into my garage. Suddenly my house is a gas condom, trapping noxious fumes from a mobile factory smoke stack.
The man looks like a tow truck driver. He hasn’t shaved in a week. He has 4 layers of grub on top of grime. He is wearing a non descript knit hat. His brown hair, flows like dirty sludge from under his winter cap. It looks like a greasy octopus of hair dangling above his eyes, sleeping on his forehead like a drunk caterpillar.
The man in thin. He is wearing large orange work gloves. He looks like a soiled stay puff marshmallow man.
“I’m Jimmy with Tow Pro,” he says extending his hand through a blast of exhaust.
I shake his hand and try and reposition myself away from the toxic fumes bellowing from the double sized exhaust.
“I don’t want to tow this,” he says yelling over his engine’s roar.
I look at the Jaguar Sports car sitting quietly in the garage.
The battery has been coughing up blood for the better part of three days. I’ve been getting sluggish starts and then a screen that says low battery warning.
This morning I got nothing. I pushed the starter and got quiet.
Somewhere, that ant under that mountain has sucked the life out of my brand new battery.
The normally angry, snarling, engine, quick to fire up thoughts of racing greatness, is silent. The accelerating, G force dynamic of this Jaguar hungry and powerful, is now just a memory.
“Where’s your battery,” The greasy tow truck man asks.
“It’s in the trunk,” I say, hitting the latch.
He pulls up the flannel covered segment, exposing the foreign looking battery.
“European number,” he grumbles.
He doesn’t say it’s not American, but you can hear it in his pursive snorts.
He puts his gigantic jumper claws on the battery.
He presses a button on his prehistoric truck and the mechanism grows louder.
He gets in my driver’s seat.
I look at him in the front seat, a racing cockpit filled with instrumentation reserved for diabolical speed demons.
He poises his hand over the start button. His fingers are filthy, covered with engine grime. I don’t like him touching my baby. It’s like sharing your girlfriend with a transient leaning on a dumpster.
He pushes the button.
Glug. Clunk. Bang. Hiss. Silence.
“It’s dead,” he says.
He waits a second letting the magic juice from the metallic dinosaur churn and spit and blow charge into the back of the dead missile in my garage.
He pushes the button again.
Chug. Clunk. Hiss.
VROOOOOOOOOM!
The engine explodes like a piston symphony of extraordinary magnitude.
A silent conductor of energy draws forth the RPM’s of energy, and seismic amplitude.
I feel a chill dance down my spine.
Starting this car is like hearing a Rolling Stones tune for the 1st time.
You remember where you were, how you felt, why you invested in this expensive mechanism.
“She’ll hold a charge for now. But you can’t turn it off. You gotta drive her up to the dealership. Let it die there,” he says pushing himself out of the cockpit.
He looks at the vehicle longingly, like an old girlfriend that still warms his heart.
“She’s a beauty,” he says.
He pulls off his big orange glove and extends his hand.
I shake it firmly with a smile.
This little tow truck man, like the ant under the mountain, has brought life to my dormant dreams.
He has overcome Global Warming and a dead battery, and breathed electrical life into a newborn baby sports car.
He turns off the jet exhaust of noxious fumes.
My head is swimming with dizzy thoughts fueled by carbon monoxide and lust for speed.
The sound of the engine roaring like an angry big game cat is intoxicating.
The man winds his cables, As the fumes diminish.
The cold air is crisp and invigorating.
Somewhere the debate of Global Warming rages on.
Somewhere a little ant is victorious under a mountainous crushing weight of adversity.
Somewhere a Jaguar roars from its perch ready to consume a hungry chunk of road.
Life’s Crazy