We all want things, lots of things.
The big question, however, is how badly do we want them? To what lengths would we go to get a thing we want?
I think I discovered an answer to that question, at least for myself, this afternoon. It was a wake-up call, of sorts, but I am only human.
The driver’s side sun visor gave out on our very old car recently (ten years ago, to be exact, but in the history of the universe, that is pretty recent.) Today was the day the repair was going to happen. It started off as an idea and grew within an hour to a maniacal obsession.
The old visor broke one sad day and since then, it has flopped around like a hapless hockey goalie trying hard to bring Toronto a Stanley Cup, something it last won when I was 16. I am now 73. It was as useless as would-be milk-producing flexible fixtures on a bull.
Wide-eyed and determined as a new Toronto hockey coach, I drove our old bucket of bolts to the auto recyclers. I hate going there because the first thing they ask me when they see what I am driving is how much it would take to get me to leave it there. An even older vehicle I took there a couple of years ago fetched me $300 and bulged the left pocket of my jeans as I walked home.
But I fended off any such question this time by walking in with my useless sun visor in hand, cleverly having removed it before entering the premises. They said they could get me one from another ancient automobile for $20.
“Sold,” I yelled and was invited to follow a young fellow through the office and out into the junkyard. This rusty old car and truck cemetery was a massive collection of hazards for a sometimes stumblebum like me. But treading carefully, I managed to make it to a car similar to ours.
Similar, but different, in a few respects. It had no doors, and no seats. Ours at least has those.
But it had a crackerjack of a sun visor. With one flaw. The mirror on it had been removed and sold to an earlier customer. No matter, I thought. I don’t need a sun visor to indicate what a fine-looking fellow am I.
But then came a wrinkle. The auto recycler guy who stood before me asked me if I could take his screwdriver and remove my treasure myself. He had hurt himself and was in some pain. At that point I would have stood on my head in the greasy mud we had waded through to get there and sang the national anthem backwards. In French.
Now here is where a man knows he really wants something. The driver’s seat was missing, of course, which meant I would have to sit on the floor while unscrewing the sun visor. Because the car doors were missing, recent downpours of rain had left quite the sizeable lake on the car floor.
Did I object, hesitate even? Did Lincoln give away his ticket to Ford’s Theatre that fateful night in April?
I worked feverishly, trying to minimize the soaking my clothes were absorbing as I sat on a car floor covered in several inches of water.
But as I walked away a few minutes later, “new” sun visor in hand, I paused to check out a few other cars, some missing a hood, a steering wheel, tires, even engines, and I thought how good any one of those beauties would look in my driveway.
It was a sloshy ride home as I sat on a big shopping bag. But the sun setting in the west didn’t even bother trying to blind me with its brilliance. And with my new visor, it never will again.
Times such as this lets a man know what a winner he is. A sitdown kind of guy ready for his next challenge.
Bring it on!
©2024 Jim Hagarty
