I decided to change the oil in my Jeep. I was leaving for a motorcycle training class in an hour, but I had enough time. I had changed it in much less time than that before.
Open the hood: easy
Get oil collection pan under car: easy
Get under car and unscrew bolt: easy
Wait for oil to empty: easy
Screw bolt back in: easy
Get out new oil filter and prepare: easy
Remove old oil filter: Hard
Removing an oil filter is usually an easy task. You just get out the oil filter wrench and take it off. However, I quickly discovered the oil filter wrench was in the other car. The other car was gone somewhere, with no estimated time of return.
Never mind, an oil filter wrench is a simple tool, I will just use something else. I grabbed a piece of rubber, stretched it around the filter and tugged. And tugged. Nothing.
Find another kind of wrench. Sure. This one fits, but I can’t find the room in the engine compartment to turn it. Grrrr.
I’ll just grab it and turn it with my bare hands. It has that grippy surface so I should be able to do it. Werrggough! I nearly put out the tendon in my arm again trying that. No good.
That’s when I started getting mad.
I knew what I needed to do. Had the desire to do it, the strength to do it, the determination to do whatever it takes to do it, but to lacked one simple tool which made it totally impossible.
I started throwing objects and using short and simple adjectives.
Time was running out before I had to leave.
I thought about going into town to buy an oil filter wrench. No good, my car was devoid of oil, couldn’t be driven. I got out a screwdriver and a hammer and tried driving the screwdriver into the oil filter so I could have something to turn it with. No room to swing the hammer.
Well, amidst my object throwing, adjectives, repeated attempts with the aforementioned methods, Dad drove up in the other car.
I had the job done in two minutes.
There’s probably a moral here.
