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Alternator trouble
Aug. 12th, 2002 03:17 pmI’ve been having alternator trouble. When you have alternator trouble, battery trouble often results. Bear with me; I didn’t know either of those facts until Thursday, when my car began refusing to start at unpredictable intervals.
Of course I own jumper cables. Sensible people own jumper cables, and I consider myself a sensible person, at least to the extent that sensible-ness is something that can be purchased. So when the car wouldn’t start Thursday morning, I went digging for my jumper cables, which were coiled around my spare tire, which is in a special compartment under the floor of my trunk.
In my trunk were bags and bags and bags of various things. Bags of kidlet’s outgrown clothes waiting to be donated to Goodwill. Bags of books to go to the museum bookstore. Bags of bags, even, waiting to to into the recycle bin at the supermarket.
Also an ice scraper, a box containing Windex and paper towels, three bottles of motor oil, and a bottle of windshield washer fluid (proving that if you get too organized, you go full circle and become disorganized again). Also numerous empty water bottles, a four-year-old phone book, and a chocolate pumpkin which memory traces to Halloween of 1998.
When I had emptied the trunk and found the jumper cables, I turned to the place where I always turn for help: a book. Fortunately, my owner’s manual has step-by-step instructions on how to jump-start a car, though half of every page was taken up with large yellow boxes of warnings: Fire! Electrocution! You’ll ruin your radio!
So picture me: 7:30 in the morning, alone in the garage, squeezing around nine years of accumulated clutter between the spouse’s car and mine, cables in one hand, book in the other hand, muttering “Bad positive ... good positive ... what the hell is the lifting bar?”
The second time it happened, I had a restless three-year-old in the back seat waiting to be taken to a birthday party, and as the spouse was away, I had to go knock on the door of my neighbor, the Landscaper, and ask him for help. He was very skeptical that a jump was really all I needed, and seemed pleasantly surprised when the car started right up.
The third time was in a restaurant parking lot. I went back into the restaurant in the middle of the lunch-hour rush to say, “Can someone come help me jump-start my car?” and the hostess looked at me with naked panic in her eyes. I hate the moment when you realize that you’re the worst thing that’s happened to someone’s workday.
As of this moment, though, I have a new battery and a newly repaired alternator, whatever the hell an alternator is. And I can say very sagely, “I was having alternator trouble,” just the way B’Elanna used to be able to say, “We’ll have to oscillate the whoopthrusters,” and everyone nods as though I really knew what I was talking about.
Of course I own jumper cables. Sensible people own jumper cables, and I consider myself a sensible person, at least to the extent that sensible-ness is something that can be purchased. So when the car wouldn’t start Thursday morning, I went digging for my jumper cables, which were coiled around my spare tire, which is in a special compartment under the floor of my trunk.
In my trunk were bags and bags and bags of various things. Bags of kidlet’s outgrown clothes waiting to be donated to Goodwill. Bags of books to go to the museum bookstore. Bags of bags, even, waiting to to into the recycle bin at the supermarket.
Also an ice scraper, a box containing Windex and paper towels, three bottles of motor oil, and a bottle of windshield washer fluid (proving that if you get too organized, you go full circle and become disorganized again). Also numerous empty water bottles, a four-year-old phone book, and a chocolate pumpkin which memory traces to Halloween of 1998.
When I had emptied the trunk and found the jumper cables, I turned to the place where I always turn for help: a book. Fortunately, my owner’s manual has step-by-step instructions on how to jump-start a car, though half of every page was taken up with large yellow boxes of warnings: Fire! Electrocution! You’ll ruin your radio!
So picture me: 7:30 in the morning, alone in the garage, squeezing around nine years of accumulated clutter between the spouse’s car and mine, cables in one hand, book in the other hand, muttering “Bad positive ... good positive ... what the hell is the lifting bar?”
The second time it happened, I had a restless three-year-old in the back seat waiting to be taken to a birthday party, and as the spouse was away, I had to go knock on the door of my neighbor, the Landscaper, and ask him for help. He was very skeptical that a jump was really all I needed, and seemed pleasantly surprised when the car started right up.
The third time was in a restaurant parking lot. I went back into the restaurant in the middle of the lunch-hour rush to say, “Can someone come help me jump-start my car?” and the hostess looked at me with naked panic in her eyes. I hate the moment when you realize that you’re the worst thing that’s happened to someone’s workday.
As of this moment, though, I have a new battery and a newly repaired alternator, whatever the hell an alternator is. And I can say very sagely, “I was having alternator trouble,” just the way B’Elanna used to be able to say, “We’ll have to oscillate the whoopthrusters,” and everyone nods as though I really knew what I was talking about.