Serious mechanical conversations, greasy catalog lookups, and seasoned do-it-yourself mechanics looking for certain car parts are usually found at the crowded counter of a downtown auto parts store. But when a well-dressed blonde woman confidently approached the main counter and asked for a seven-ten cap, the whole mood turned into a scene of pure comedy. The on-duty mechanics stopped what they were doing, exchanged incredibly confused looks, and tried to think of any esoteric automotive part she might be referring to.
Sensing their extreme perplexity, the woman sincerely claimed that the part was right on top of her car’s engine and that she needed a replacement right now because hers had somehow vanished. She proudly replied that she drove a vintage Buick sedan when the counter staff inquired about the make of her car. The parts manager asked her to explain the physical dimensions of the missing item in an attempt to reduce the inventory options. In response, the woman created a roughly three-and-a-half-inch-diameter circle with both hands. She simply shrugged her shoulders when asked about its precise mechanical function, acknowledging that she had no idea what it accomplished. However, she did point out that it had always been firmly fixed to the top of the motor.
In a desperate attempt to find a visual clue, one of the staff members passed a pen and blank notepad across the counter and asked if she could quickly draw a diagram of the thing from memory. With an enthusiastic nod, the woman drew a flawless circle that was about 3.5 inches wide right away. She meticulously wrote the numbers seven, one, and zero in the precise middle of her drawing. As she completed the sketch, the mechanics on the other side of the counter kept a close eye on her hand movements. As soon as they saw the upside-down numbers from their vantage point, they burst into hysterical laughter and literally fell behind the high counter to catch their breath. The manager eventually got back up and told the customer that she was reading the writing upside down and that she really required a regular oil cap while wiping amused tears from his eyes.
The everyday challenges of handling the inevitable process of human aging are well reflected in this kind of mechanical perplexity. Many people in their senior years would be seriously considering trading in their existing frames for a brand-new showroom model if the human body were treated exactly like a vintage car. The colorful original paint job gradually becomes a little drab and weather-beaten, while the body’s outer finish naturally gathers a variety of ugly bumps, permanent dents, and deep scratches as the decades pass.
To exacerbate the situation, the biological headlights start to drift considerably out of focus, making it very challenging to see items up close or read fine print without artificial assistance. Even in the greatest of weather circumstances, the vehicle’s general traction and suspension lose the graceful agility of youth, leading to a regular tendency to slip, slide, skid, and unintentionally bump into fixed household objects. It takes hours of warm-up time to eventually achieve maximum highway speed, and the internal fuel system burns energy utterly inefficiently, leaving the spare tires around the waist permanently discolored with noticeable varicose veins. The worst part of dealing with this high-mileage physical breakdown, however, is that almost every time the engine sneezes, coughs, or suddenly sputters, either the lower exhaust system loudly backfires or the top radiator starts to leak.
Even the animal kingdom occasionally attempts to improve its performance in the fast-paced world of automobiles, as evidenced by a highly ambitious garden snail who became really bored of his species’ widespread reputation for being extremely slow. The snail decided that a vintage Datsun 240-Z sports automobile was the ideal vehicle to transform his way of life after spending days searching around neighborhood car lots in an effort to make up for the speed gap. With one very specific custom modification request, the snail boldly slithered into the closest dealership and declared his intention to buy the car right away. He insisted that the car’s exterior be entirely redone with a striking 240-S image in place of the conventional emblem.
He wanted to change the letter to an S, but the confused auto salesperson scratched his head and insisted on knowing why. With pride, the snail said that the letter only stood for snail. He explained that he wanted every driver and pedestrian he passed on the highway to know exactly who was operating the fast-moving vehicle. The dealer quickly consented to the special paint job for a tiny additional charge because he didn’t want to miss the extremely uncommon and valuable opportunity to complete a sports vehicle sale with a snail. After receiving his brand-new car, the victorious snail spent the rest of his happy days speeding down the open highway. From that day on, shocked bystanders would point and exclaim, “Wow, look at that S-car go,” anytime they saw the car speeding by like a blur.
Meanwhile, a seventy-five-year-old Cinderella was relishing the tranquil end of her life in a quiet suburban neighborhood distant from the highway. She enjoyed spending her afternoons lounging in a wooden rocking rocker on her front porch, watching the world pass by with a devoted old cat named Alan for sole companionship, following a long and happy marriage to her beloved Prince Charming, who had tragically died years earlier.
The Fairy Godmother appeared out of nowhere one sunny afternoon when a magnificent flash of light filled the doorway. After all these years, Cinderella gasped in complete disbelief and wondered what had brought her former guardian back. With a pleasant grin, the Fairy Godmother explained that Cinderella had been granted three final wishes to satisfy any remaining desires in her heart because she had led an unusually virtuous, wholesome, and kind life since their last meeting. After a few moments of introspection, Cinderella, utterly ecstatic, expressed her first wish: to become extremely wealthy. Her wooden rocking chair instantly became solid, shiny gold. Alan the cat rushed off Cinderella’s lap in a fright and scampered to the far edge of the porch, trembling with extreme anxiety, while Cinderella was completely astonished.
The elderly woman looked down at her weak, wrinkled body and wished to be youthful and radiantly beautiful again after the Fairy Godmother encouraged her to make her second wish. Her youthful appearance quickly returned in a glorious swirl of magic, and long-forgotten health, vitality, and vigor started to flow through her veins. When prompted to make one last wish, Cinderella turned to face her scared pet, who was hiding in the corner, and wished for Alan to change into a charming young man. The cat somehow underwent a basic biological metamorphosis to become a man so breathtakingly gorgeous and flawless that birds literally dropped from the sky in awe. After congratulating her, the Fairy Godmother disappeared in a flash of blue light. The young Cinderella gazed at the beautiful boy in front of him for a short while. Alan approached her gently, put his powerful arms around her, leaned in close to her ear, and whispered that he was sure she was very sorry that he had been neutered.
On a large family ranch that two sisters, a blonde and a brunette, inherited, the theme of severe miscommunication reappeared. Within a few years of taking over the company, the two were in serious financial difficulties and would be immediately repossessed by the bank if they couldn’t find a means to buy a premium prize bull to breed their own cattle. After balancing the home checkbook, the rational brunette calculated that they had precisely six hundred dollars remaining. After giving her sister instructions to wait for her call before hooking the trailer to the vehicle to transport the animal home, she made the decision to take the money and head out west to check a premium bull for sale.
When they reached the far-off ranch, the brunette examined the bull and enthusiastically consented to buy it for the set price of $599. She went into the closest local telegraph office with exactly one dollar remaining in her pocket and sent her sister a message to drive out with the trailer. But the telegraph operator told her that the fee of the service was precisely ninety-nine cents per word. She gave it some serious thinking for a few minutes before telling the operator to send the word “comfortable,” realizing that her limited funds would only allow her to send one word. The perplexed operator questioned how her sister could possibly comprehend the intricate directive to hitch the trailer and head west with just one phrase. The brunette calmly stated that because her sister was blonde, she would just read the message very carefully, interpreting the single phrase as “come for bull.”
When a young blonde mother took her sobbing baby to a nearby pediatric clinic for an urgent examination, a similar literal interpretation took place. Following a comprehensive medical examination, the doctor promptly wrote a prescription for specialized medicinal eardrops after concluding that the baby was experiencing a typical, excruciating earache. The doctor used a popular medical acronym, drawing a circle around the capital letter R to indicate the right side, to write down in the particular usage instructions on the page that two drops should be applied to the right ear every four hours.
After a few days, the irate mother came back to the clinic to say that the baby was still howling in agony, the medication was totally ineffectual, and his little rear end was getting quite greasy from all the oil. The doctor, utterly perplexed, asked to look at the prescription bottle to determine what went wrong. As it turned out, the retail pharmacist had literally typed the condensed instructions on the printed label, telling the bewildered mother to apply two drops to the back every four hours.