early

as the title suggests, it's before eight a.m., i am at work, not working, planning for another tour of interstate 5. my truck is back home, my cat trusts me, my dog has stopped crapping in places i walk, my son is speaking to me... time to go again, restore the balance. there was nothing wrong (discernably) with the truck. operator error. why is it that when they can't figure it out, its my fault? i will bemoan, again, the change in men overall, in mechanics, just like the change in snow plow operators. where are the men? skip retired. where are the men named skip? last of the great and thinking mechanics. he was handsome, drunk, funny, stared at my tits and listened to NPR while he worked. he knew who to vote for AND could figure out anything and without the ford motor company digitized laptop scanners. he could think. what has happened to thinking? with so much automated diagnostic information, they don't think. can't. are you sure the motor was revving? they asked. yup. i'm pretty darn sure it did as i powerbraked it to keep from flying out in traffic. yup. i should not be blonde because i am not stupid. not about cars. i used to have a 53 chevy pickup that i had to manually shift the linkage whenever i stopped. it was inconvenient as hell but gave me a working knowlege of a standard transmission. i had a 65 dodge polara that i had to smack the starter with a shovel (it didn't have to be a shovel, a 2x4 would have worked) to get it to start every time. necessity may be the mother of invention, but poverty is the grandmother. you learn what you have to learn, or I have, and it brings me back to the point: the mechanics don't think. I know (and now YOU know) that there IS a problem with the cold start system of my truck. it doesn't prevent me from driving (very little will--i have driven without brakes, without headlights, without wipers in oregon in winter) but they don't believe me. and that may be the crux of the problem. i was not compelled, as i sometimes am, to regale them with the convoluted stories of why my life has taken the course it has, and how bad cars with bald tires, no brake lights and plywood back seats played a part in getting me where i am today: an unconvincing blonde girl with money in a ford service department with a brand new shiny red F-150 -- but if i fucking tell you my choke is stuck.... my choke is stuck. am i making any kind of a point???? just because the problem didn't show up on their laptop does not mean it didn't happen. I've been choked, i know whereof i speak! ah well. i laugh to myself when i leave the pretty, coiffed, well-dressed boys with a legitimate check for 97.60, cashable right now, money in the bank. why didn't they just sit around a fire in a barrel, drink a little whiskey, shoot some crank and figure it out? jesus. is it too much to ask?