Oh boy, mechanical…things. When I agreed to take this course, it was going to be on the basis of there being no mechanical lessons. Like, at all. I’ll take on maths problems, knitting woes and a load of other things. I even saw on the syllabus that we’d be learning how to bathe dogs, and I accepted that even though I really don’t like dogs. I was THAT open.

But I don’t do my own mechanical work. I don’t even want to LEARN about my own mechanical work. I have a local car servicing mechanic in Ringwood and they deal with all of my business, from minor tire adjustments to the hypothetical situation wherein I crash into a large kangaroo and my car dangles on the brink of being written off. If I had my way, I would never even open up my bonnet and add any of…like, the stuff that goes in there. I think coolant is one thing? What does coolant even do, anyway? Nobody knows. Cars are, by their very nature, far too complicated for anyone who doesn’t have a degree in their mechanical care.

But then our knitting tutor gets gangrene or something from attempting a complicated double-fold, and we had a replacement tutor who said he was going to teach us how to change a tire.

And yes, I understand that this is a basic life skills night course, and changing a tire is something a lot of people would consider to be a basic life skill. That is, CRAZY people. Changing a tire was just as bad as I always thought it would be, all scraping knees and getting oil on your fingers. There are PEOPLE for this sort of thing, people! PEOPLE. I can give you the number of a really good place that does vehicle inspection near Ringwood, and they’ll sort you out without you having to get a speck of anything on your fingers, except a bit of salt from the chips you’ll eat from the vending machine as you wait for your car to be ready. And you’ll never lift a finger.

-Sue