Recharging the battery

Hello Internet,

Recently my car battery died.

(And by that I mean it died then I waited a month to do anything about it because, let's face it, sometimes it's nice to be chauffeured.) Which is really unfortunate, and I know what you're thinking, "Jump the battery." Well let me walk you through the chain of events:

The day I realized it had died, obviously I jumped the battery. Pause - Jumping car batteries has always terrified me; we've all seen the scene in the TV show when the guy puts on the jumper cables wrong and then, after a massive concussive and electrical explosion he stands, fried and hairless. I don't think I'd look good hairless, I'm to boney and I need the hair mass to fill me out.

Resume - Like I said, I jumped it with some help from Taylor but when I waited for it to charge and tried to drive it I only made it about 4 feet before it died and I rolled it back into my parking place. Call Dad. Remind him I'm an Art Major. Feel the disappointment. Mentally designing the "Sorry I can't throw a football" Fathers Day card.

Fast forward another week and it's the day before Thanksgiving break. My plan was to be the manliest man and take out the battery myself, take it over to WalMart, get a new one to put in then wrestle some crocodiles or light a cigar with the muzzle flash from a shot gun because, you know, I'm a man. After scouring my tool box, some colorful and down right creative swearing, and two trips to the hardware store I realized that I neither have the tools nor the capability [read: patience nor the desire] to remove the battery myself. All the tools I had in my gritty wrench hands were not enough to remove the bolt holding the battery to the frame of the car. Something about foreign cars being on the metric tool set or being blessed with magic powers or something; we (Taylor and I) decided to jump the car and wait for it to charge again. This time when I connected the jumper cables though the alarm stated going off. Pause - whenever I hear a car alarm going off I just want the person to steal the car faster because car alarms are annoying. But this is college and people are nice and call security where I'm from. Resume - After a call to My-Friend-the-Mechanic-Nick and a lovely chat with a security guard who was clearly more in-the-know then me we figured out how to stop the alarm and got the car started. After waiting half an hour for it to charge and driving it around a little I thought it would be safe to shut the car off and try to start it again, but guess what, it just wasn't. The car died, again.

After more colorful language I had my roommate Toby take me to AutoZone the next day and a wonderful balding women who hunts her own Thanksgiving deer every year replaced my battery in 10 minutes. Happy Holidays everyone! Drive safe.