{"id":42,"date":"2005-11-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-22T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/chatteringmind\/2005\/11\/at-the-service-station.html"},"modified":"2005-11-22T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-11-22T12:00:00","slug":"at-the-service-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/chatteringmind\/2005\/11\/at-the-service-station.html","title":{"rendered":"At the Service Station"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My husband and I will be driving up to western Massachusetts with the kids tomorrow for the holiday. So today I prepared for the trip by taking my car in to have the oil changed. Also, for the past six days, a strange little light has flashed insistently on the dashboard. It looks like a neon drawing of a radiant sun, but the sun has a tiny, fervent exclamation point placed inside it. Hmmm…the sun shining with urgency. Global warming? Can’t be. Indeed, the car’s guidebook informed me that what I had was a brake light problem. <\/p>\n

So after my usual school drop-off, I took the car in to see Henry, our local automobile man. When Henry saw me, he gave me a puzzled little grin. At that moment, Chattering Mind, having focused on nothing but breakfast and loading the kids’ backpacks into the trunk, realized that my hat was on lopsided and I was wearing narrow eyeglasses that could be seen as kooky. And even though Henry couldn’t see my lower body from where he was standing, I knew I was also wearing billowy red cotton trousers under my top and long coat, pants I had actually slept in last night that would be appropriate for an audition at the Big Apple Circus<\/a>. <\/p>\n

“Henry!” I say, taking my hat and glasses off, and running one hand through my hair. “Hi, I’m feeling a little disorganized. I came in here for an oil change for tomorrow’s drive, but now I see there’s a light on that indicates a problem with the brake lights.”<\/p>\n

“Okay,” Henry says. “We’ll take a look.”<\/p>\n

“And also, oh!” I remember an additional, previously unacknowledged problem: “Be careful, because the alarm system beeper is broken where it attaches to the key chain and you could lose the beeper. It just falls off.” <\/p>\n

Henry squints at my key chain and picks it up.<\/p>\n

“Oh, I can fix that,” he says, staring at the torn hole where the beeper attaches. “Do you want me to?”<\/p>\n

“Well, sure,” I say happily. “I thought I was going to have to get a new one from the dealer.”<\/p>\n

“No, I can fix that with some wire and a little epoxy.”<\/p>\n

“Oh, would you? You’d really do that?”<\/p>\n

Such a small favor. But I found myself oddly incredulous, immensely relieved.<\/p>\n

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