Usually my wife saves me. Last week we reversed roles. I saved her.
Maybe the word “saved” isn’t perfect. “Baling her out” or “showing her a new trick” might be a better way to say it.
We need to set the context on this incident, because almost always it’s my wife who comes to the rescue and not the other way around. When I’m working on the desktop downstairs in my cave and the cursor disappears: “Deb, I’ve rebooted three times and the cursor still doesn’t come up. Can you please help?”
And she comes down to save me. Within minutes, sometimes within seconds, she has diagnosed the problem, implemented the fix, let me know everything is copasetic with the hint of a smile, then she heads back upstairs to her knitting.
She is a technological genius, from computers to cars to mechanical yard tools. I break them. She fixes them. Actually, I can’t start them and she figures out how to start them. Some riff on that theme is a fairly consistent one for our marriage and how things get done.
Recently, for example, as we prepped the great Wisconsin snow-out, I attempted to get the snowblower running so when we got slammed it would fire right up. Now, of course, there are five apparatuses you must set correctly for our monster machine to successfully engage. And each year, because it’s been 9 months since the last time I fired it up, I forget at least one of those steps.
This year was no different. I turned the ignition, set the choke, primed it, set the drive in the proper direction, then turned the electronic starter, which chugged along, but wouldn’t give you the explosive start where you’d yell “yes” because you knew you’d be to shoot snow for 90 minutes straight.
“Deb, it won’t turn over.” She was waiting at the sliding glass door, knowing what would happen. Nine seconds later she slapped her hands together and trudged back inside, having turned one of the knobs about a tenth of an inch to the right to make sure it was perfectly in position. I’m incapable of accomplishing that.
So, when the polar vortex attacked last week and her car wouldn’t start at the supermarket and she called in what was clearly an emotional and scared voice (it was -24 outside with a windchill of -54), I said to get inside the store and I would be down.
Growing up in the northern tier of the U.S., I knew some car starting tricks in brutally cold weather. Since the car battery did let the starter grind, it was not the battery. Somehow the gas was not getting from the tank to the engine.
Like the snowblower, the car engine needed to be primed, so rather than attempt to jumpstart the car, I took her keys, pumped the accelerator five times and pushed the ignition and WHAMMO, it blasted to life. “HOW’D YOU DO THAT? THANK YOU!”
I showed her what I did. Not a biggie really, and a good lesson to have in your hip pocket for future situations.
If there’s no sound when you try to start your car, yeah, it’s probably the battery. If the battery shows signs of life, pump the accelerator before using the ignition and see how that goes.
You’ll earn brownie points and feel a bit less like a mechanical dummy.
Maybe the word “saved” isn’t perfect. “Baling her out” or “showing her a new trick” might be a better way to say it.
We need to set the context on this incident, because almost always it’s my wife who comes to the rescue and not the other way around. When I’m working on the desktop downstairs in my cave and the cursor disappears: “Deb, I’ve rebooted three times and the cursor still doesn’t come up. Can you please help?”
And she comes down to save me. Within minutes, sometimes within seconds, she has diagnosed the problem, implemented the fix, let me know everything is copasetic with the hint of a smile, then she heads back upstairs to her knitting.
She is a technological genius, from computers to cars to mechanical yard tools. I break them. She fixes them. Actually, I can’t start them and she figures out how to start them. Some riff on that theme is a fairly consistent one for our marriage and how things get done.
Recently, for example, as we prepped the great Wisconsin snow-out, I attempted to get the snowblower running so when we got slammed it would fire right up. Now, of course, there are five apparatuses you must set correctly for our monster machine to successfully engage. And each year, because it’s been 9 months since the last time I fired it up, I forget at least one of those steps.
This year was no different. I turned the ignition, set the choke, primed it, set the drive in the proper direction, then turned the electronic starter, which chugged along, but wouldn’t give you the explosive start where you’d yell “yes” because you knew you’d be to shoot snow for 90 minutes straight.
“Deb, it won’t turn over.” She was waiting at the sliding glass door, knowing what would happen. Nine seconds later she slapped her hands together and trudged back inside, having turned one of the knobs about a tenth of an inch to the right to make sure it was perfectly in position. I’m incapable of accomplishing that.
So, when the polar vortex attacked last week and her car wouldn’t start at the supermarket and she called in what was clearly an emotional and scared voice (it was -24 outside with a windchill of -54), I said to get inside the store and I would be down.
Growing up in the northern tier of the U.S., I knew some car starting tricks in brutally cold weather. Since the car battery did let the starter grind, it was not the battery. Somehow the gas was not getting from the tank to the engine.
Like the snowblower, the car engine needed to be primed, so rather than attempt to jumpstart the car, I took her keys, pumped the accelerator five times and pushed the ignition and WHAMMO, it blasted to life. “HOW’D YOU DO THAT? THANK YOU!”
I showed her what I did. Not a biggie really, and a good lesson to have in your hip pocket for future situations.
If there’s no sound when you try to start your car, yeah, it’s probably the battery. If the battery shows signs of life, pump the accelerator before using the ignition and see how that goes.
You’ll earn brownie points and feel a bit less like a mechanical dummy.
