You know that Liberty Mutual commercial, with that girl and her car named Brad?
"You owned a car for 4 years. You named it Brad. You loved Brad. And then you totaled him. You two had been through everything together. 2 boyfriends, 3 jobs. Nothing could replace Brad. Then Liberty Mutual calls, and you break into your happy dance."
I have heard her voice a lot in my head in the past week or so.
I don't have a car named Brad. It doesn't have a name at all, actually. I don't have Liberty Mutual. And I definitely haven't ever totaled my car. But I did do a happy dance thanks to duct tape and my dad.
My car and I have been through a lot together. We'll say 1.5 boyfriends. Moves to three different states. 113,000 miles logged, crisscrossing the eastern half of the US. One transmission replacement. Four jobs. One collision with Bambi. We'll celebrate our ten-year anniversary this December. She's been a trusty car.
But I'm starting to see the writing on the wall. I imagine a new vehicle is on the horizon within the next year or so.
You know, when your car starts to age, you normally expect engine parts to fail or come tumbling out the bottom.
You don't expect entire windows to fall out.
I was over to a friend's house this past Sunday, outside chatting in the driveway. We were standing next to the rear of my car, and I happened to notice the decal in my rear window was a bit crooked. I figured I might as well fix it while we're standing there. I pop the lever for the window, and as I go to raise it, the whole right side of the window just slides down into my hands. The left corner is still attached, but I'm standing there holding the right side, with the top right hinge having totally come undone. I may or may not have sworn under my breath.
I looked at my friend with this look that basically said, "What the h#*&?" We fool around with it for a bit, and I'm wondering how on earth I'm going to fix this thing, or how I'm even going to drive it because I can't exactly drive around with just the one corner attached. The pressure and the weight would shear off the remaining hinge, so I really just had no clue what I was going to do.
My friend's husband, Dave, came around and looked at it. He also muttered a few swear words. I called my dad to get his input on what to do, and before I get off the phone, out came Dave with a roll of packing tape and duct tape. "We'll just duct tape the window down," he said.
I was skeptical of this approach, but you know what they say - when all else fails, use duct tape.
So, duct tape it we do.
We slapped enough duct tape and packing tape on there for me to drive the few miles back to my parents' house so my dad can take a look at it. I think I white-knuckled it the whole way there, just envisioning the tape busting and glass shattering all over the road.
My dad, being the very practical and ingenious man that he is, hillbilly-rigged a few things together and basically drilled a hole in the existing hinge and bolted everything together. The original bolt had completed corroded and basically turned to chalk.
After he fixed it, and while driving back to my apartment, I began imagining all the ways this could have gone wrong otherwise. I could have been on the road instead of standing in a drive way when that window decided to pop out. It could have gone flying, hit another car, caused an accident, done some serious harm to others. There had been tentative plans for me to be in Missouri, and if I had followed my original plans, I would have been driving back from Missouri on the day this happened. I could have been hundreds of miles from home with no rear window and no clue how to repair it myself. This could have played out so different.
I was thanking Jesus profusely all the way home. So grateful I was where I was when it fell out, that I was with friends. Grateful my dad knows how to use a drill and generally how to fix a whole lot of random things.
And thank God for duct tape. The Bible says God uses everything together for my good, right?
Turns out duct tape is no exception.
Let's just hope I don't have to use it to hold any other parts of my car together anytime in the near future.
