This morning a co-workers car wouldn't start so I gave him a ride. No biggie, nothing any normal person wouldn't do in my place. Sure I was already at work at it was almost 8 but what was I going to say, "no"?
So 2 o'clock rolls around and he's asks if when I drop him off I can jump him and follow him to Auto Zone to get the battery replaced. Me being a self made hermit with no plans I of course said yes. I mean it beats sitting on the couch wondering what show I should watch or sadly swiping away in Tinder.
After work we get back to his car and I get out my jumper cables while he goes to get his socket set. I pop my hood and then realize I don't have a clue where the release is to let me lift it up. so I grab my cars manual out of the glove compartment and flip through the pages feeling silly. Finally finding that information I get the hood up and grab my jumper cables (obviously my first time using them).
He comes back socket set in hand and motions for the cables. But then he looks at his car and his and I ask "want me to do it?" to which he replies "yeah, I haven't done this before." So I hook up the cables and he tries to start. Nothing happens. Tries again. Nothing happens. I leaf through my car manual again to make sure I didn't do anything stupid and low I followed the instructions correctly.
I check the connections on my battery, I check the positive on his. They're all good. Then I wiggle the negative and instead of hearing a metal on metal sound I hear a metal on plastic sound. This dunce tried to ground to plastic (which looked a lot like all the metal) so moving it to a proper ground and we were off to the races.
Drove over to Auto Zone and after a fair bit of work to get a cross bar out and some bolts out of very tight spaces we pulled out the battery.
He goes and get the new battery and we go through the whole process backwards getting the damn thing in there. Of course the new battery has no handle on it so it's just that much more difficult to work with. But we get the battery back in, cross bar back in and everything nice and tight. I'm not even going to get into how we had to buy tools to get the new battery in because the terminals protruded from the back and we couldn't get the ratchet in the space.
All that done and the car comes to life. our hands are dirty and we're starving. So he offers to take me out to dinner. I ask what he likes, he says this hibachi grill. I'm down for what ever since he's buying. And man was it good, friggin delicious. We finish eating after talking a bit and enjoying the show. When walking out he slows down and says "I'm going to introduce you to a tradition" and plunges his hand into a huge basket of mints. These aren't normal mints though they're like the red and white peppermints you'd normally see but they're brown and green. And man were they weird tasting, like an Andies mint created by a man with no sense of taste only having heard them described.
All this to say as we were driving away I realized he's my friend. We aren't best friends are even very close friends but friends none the less. I'm not as alone as I think I am at times. I'm sure many of you, like me feel alone from time to time or maybe more. But I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that we make ourselves be alone by being afraid of trying, afraid of doing. It's easier said than done but don't let your fear control you, even if you fight it a little that's a small victory and small victories can turn the tide of a war.