I love watching people as they carry out their normal daily life activities. I’ll go somewhere and find myself engrossed in the daily happenings of people I neither know, nor will ever see again. I find people’s odd habits, quirky idiosyncrasies and daily happenings extremely interesting.
Watching people is a huge source of entertainment for me.
That being said, yesterday, Melissa and I were at eating at a Quizno’s near our house. We’re sitting there eating, talking and having a good time when I noticed a man having a hard time opening the hood of his car. Fancying myself as somewhat of a shade-tree mechanic, I found myself watching this guy with a kind of ‘should I offer to help?’ fascination.
It wasn’t long before a girl in an SUV pulls in next to the car. She gets out and it becomes quite obvious that she has come to help him jump-start his car. It didn’t take me long to see that jump-starting the car was something quite unfamiliar to both of them. The simple fact that they couldn’t find the hood release inside the SUV prompted me to shift from spectator to participant in this comedy of errors.
Hugh: “Should I offer to help?”
Melissa: “I’m quite sure you know more than he does.”
After our brief exchange of words, I headed outside to assist the fumbling duo.
Walking toward the couple, who was now working to untangle the jumper cables that looked old, but unused, I blurted out, “Can I give you a hand?”
“I think we can handle it” was his polite, yet persistent reply.
I shrugged, walked back inside and settled into my ringside seat. Then I gleefully waited for the upcoming attraction.
Right or wrong, the way I was taught to jump-start a car was to always start with the good battery and connect positive first, then negative. Then move on to the bad battery and connect positive first and then the negative, but not actually hook the negative to the battery, just ground it to something metal connected to the frame of the vehicle. I've always done it this way and I've never had any problems.
The first thing I noticed was that he connected his cables to the bad battery first, however I couldn’t see whether he connected positive or negative first. Then he connected the positive lead to the good car’s battery and slowly moved the negative end toward the battery…and that’s when the fun began.
In his defense, his slow negative cable movement may have been caution based, however, his puzzled expression communicated uncertainty.
When the negative cable got about two inches from the negative post on the battery, a spark shot up and he jerked his hand back. Throwing caution to the wind, he tried to quickly connect the cable with the same shocking results.
At this point he’s standing there with stinging hand and stinging pride, as the would-be good Samaritan sits laughing loudly not more than 30 feet away. (Which I’m quite certain he could hear) I tried not to laugh, I really did, but it was quite funny.
Somehow during my laughter he managed to get it hooked up and start the car.
Backing out he shifted his gaze in the direction of my amused grin and we made eye contact for the first time. Chuckling to myself I gave him a nod and a wave to thank him for the great show.
Watching people is a huge source of entertainment for me…see what I mean?
2 comments:
In about 47 years of driving, I've jump-started many a battery, but, other than pos-pos/neg-neg, have never known there to be more than that to it. Never have I ever had any problems, though, with the results. Now you have me wondering if I've just been fortunate all these or if the good Lord has been taking the shock for me?........
Do you suppose if the same situation arises again he will accept help? I hope so.
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