What a Tool! (Pt. 2)

Your brand new car should arrive in a box. A giant red ribbon and bow around the vehicle are always nice, but why doesn’t a directional pamphlet accompany the car-in-the-box? Instructions come with every other thing that you buy in a box. I would like for the directions to be written in ENGLISH. I do not speak German, Spanish, French, Italian or Chinese, and directions are hard enough to follow in English! I’m not talking about directions on how to turn the radio to a new station or how to open the trunk without getting out. Pish posh… who doesn’t know THOSE things?

I know where the key goes, but not how a keyless car works. Cars are supposed to have keys that jingle and have cool key chains (because a keyless chain makes no sense). You’ll also need your tiny drug store card to swipe for discounts, and several other keys on the key chain, some of which I have no memory of having ever used. But, that’s a different essay on memory. I want instructions on what all of the things ARE.

I would like to know the percentage of women who know what all of the things are under the hood of a car. I suspect that the number is low, really low. I’ve heard that there are classes where women and gay men can be taught about all of the things that make a car go (besides gasoline and electricity, which is a strange combination). It would not be necessary to go to a class if there was a simple booklet that showed, for example, what a fucking crankshaft is? That term sounds nasty to me, because I’ve been asked to crank a shaft more than once, but not before several Miller High-Lifes and a few tequila shots.

My sister, Sally, and I just decided to offer this tutorial video on things under the hood. The only comparison that we could think of was the human body… thus, Carnatomy 101. If you already know about how cars work, just send this to the woman in your life with a pretty red e-bow!

Sally and I like to break things down to understandable women chunks…simple yet informative, better watched with a glass of wine or four just to keep you engaged. This way you won’t have to go to a class, or you might still want to, but only as a refresher on that stick that hangs down under the car and gets all oily and dirty. What IS that thing?

When you get a new car, it’s just like a baby only way smarter. It’s very shiny, with nary a speck of dirt or grime anywhere. The inside of the car has that ‘new car smell,’ which we all have deeply inhaled because they convinced us that it was quite the selling point. Of course, now they’ve discovered that that smell is just a combination of chemicals used in car making that are completely carcinogenic. So, what else is new? We used to think that coffee, red wine, chocolates, real sugar, and coca cola were all safe.

Have you noticed that when a woman talks about whatever car problem she is having, she feels compelled to describe it using her own personal sign language as she emits the kind of noises that she knows will fully explain the issue… noises like putputputput or fltfltfltfltflt or sssssssss (I know that one! It’s usually that water holder thingy in the front under the hood that gets too hot and wants to explode… see? I’m not stupid).

Listen, here’s the thing… it’s the man’s job to keep your car in tip-top shape, because he loves you and wants you to be safe; that and he wouldn’t be caught dead driving a lady car unless it had an extra exhaust pipe on the back that he snuck on there for just such occasions. Bless his heart. Tell him that you’ve ‘got this,’ and then join AAA immediately!