The relationship between cars and humans

When I turned 15 and nine months, I sprinted to the nearest MVA to get my permit. Permit in hand, I walked out of there feeling very mature and proud of myself. I seized any opportunity I had to practice driving with my parents in the car. Whether that was on the way to school, driving to D.C., or going to the grocery store.
At sixteen and a half, I took my drivers test – failed it once, had a date mixup the second time, and passed on the third trip to the MVA – and was ready to take on the roads. I have a distinct memory of an afternoon drive back from D.C. where I was driving, my dad was in the passenger seat, and my mom and sister were in the back seats. At one point I looked around the car and saw that everyone was napping. Not only did this mean that my parents more or less trusted me as a driver, it also meant I was the only person paying attention to the road. Talk about excitement and fear.
Anyway, as the years have gone on, I’ve become increasingly comfortable driving cars but continue to dread any of the necessary maintenance that comes with the territory. Filling up the air in my tires or checking the oil levels is okay, but anything beyond that feels daunting and frustrating. Not to mention the “experts” at your local car service center who want to tell me all of the things that need to be fixed or checked or changed.
The straw that really broke my back was when I took my car in for an oil change and they told me that one of my back brake lights was out and asked if they should change it (an additional $10). Not thinking anything of it, I gave permission to change the bulb and continued to wait in the waiting area. A few minutes later, they said the same exact thing to another woman whose car was being serviced. Now, I’m not saying they were trying to gip me but I also find it quite interesting that both of us had rear brake lights that needed to be replaced.
As a parallel story: a few years ago I was driving my cousin’s car for a period of time and discovered that the car had been taking for inspection, failed inspection due to a brake light that needed to be replaced (for real this time), and that I had to get it fixed and inspected again before the grace period expired the next day. I took it to the gas station/service center near my house, hoping it was going to save me some time before going to work. The guy told me he would need to run all kinds of tests, check the alignment, and run more tests in order to inspect and pass the car. Knowing that the only problem was the brake light, I was adamant that it was the lightbulb. When he stubbornly told me that I didn’t know what I was talking about and that I was going to have problems if he didn’t run all of these tests, I took my notice and my burnt lightbulb to a different service center where they changed the bulb within 10 minutes.
As part of my “year of learning” this year, I decided that A was going to be automobile maintenance. Okay, a bit of a stretch fulfilling ‘A’ but, nevertheless, I was determined to embrace car maintenance. At some point, I discovered that a car is similar to the human body. Just as we have the respiratory system, muscular system, skeletal system, cars have the same. Together, they work to move our body (or the machine) forward; but, they can be triaged and improved as individual systems, too. A bit of relief swept over me after I realized that there were separate systems within a car.
Once I was ready to start getting my hands dirty, I told my car-loving friends about my new approach and that I’d like to shadow them at some point. One of my friends said that he was going to be working on a car that weekend and invited me over. It was going to be relatively simple work but would still be a good opportunity to learn a thing or two.
I have a confession to make. In my 26 years of life, I have never had to change a tire and, therefore, somehow, had absolutely no idea how to change it. I had a general idea – support the car, somehow take off a tire, and put a new tire back on – but if I needed to use this knowledge while stuck with a flat tire on the side of the road, I’d be totally shit outta luck. 
Anyway, I made my way over to their house the next day and was ready to get down and dirty. Once we got over the hump of my inability to change a tire, he patiently taught me and watched as I copied him. It felt a little scary but mostly empowering. At first, I thought I was going to break something but, after a few pulls on the bolts, realized that I was working with a strong car that withstood all kinds of other hits. My yanking a little too roughly wasn’t going to bring the whole car down.
So, that day I learned to change a tire and discovered that working on cars can be fun. Recently, the fuse or sensor went out on my car’s dashboard. Looks like I have my challenge ready for me to conquer…with the help of my handy coworkers and the world wide web.