Among the many people scattered throughout the world, a person would be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t had a vital tool broken at an inopportune time. From refrigerators to ovens, from plumbing to electrical systems, something always breaks at what seems like the worst possible moment. When things like this happen, most (reasonable and sane) people call someone to come fix their problems. But there are those certain individuals that would rather spend their own blood, sweat and tears fixing what they’ve broken instead of calling someone else. When imagining someone who does this sort of thing, people typically see a handy and knowledgeable person who knows how to fix every issue that may come up. This, however, was not one of those idealistic stories.
The start of this story was rather unassuming, beginning around Feb. 11, 2026. The snow was somewhat melted outside, and the roads had been cleared off enough to drive vehicles that couldn’t make it a single block without ripping the front bumper off. This is where the idiotic protagonist comes in: me. And the object of my nightmares for a week or two was my 2013 Hyundai Veloster Turbo. I awoke to find, for the first time in quite a while, that the weather outside wasn’t too abysmal. Following the thoughts that spun in my head like a train: “I should drive the Veloster today. I can’t let the battery go dead, especially when I kept it alive all winter!” This, as we will soon discover, was a terrible decision. As I gleefully skipped to the side of my beautiful vehicle with the keys hanging from my pants like a pistol in an old Western, there wasn’t a single thought flooding my mind. When I opened the door, I did the only not stupid thing I did that day: I reached into the back and grabbed the hand towel that I keep in every vehicle and popped the hood. I took the rag and checked the fluids of the car: transmission, coolant, windshield washer fluid (that was low, there’s a leak in the lines, now that I’m thinking of it I’ll fix that next) and the most important check, oil. After dutifully checking the fluids and finding no faults, I believed (mistakenly) that I could get away scot-free from paying the winter toll to the evil dry-rotted plastics.
After getting ready for the day and making what can only be described as a full itinerary for the day, I sat down in the driver’s seat and started the car. After giving it adequate time to warm up and cycle fluids through its half-awake engine, I set off on my missions. As I was driving, very cautiously and vigilantly, mind you, I heard a noise come from the roof of the vehicle. The noise was almost as if there was something plastic rolling across the roof and off the back of the car. After hearing a noise like that, I pulled off the road and looked around the car to see if that was road debris or if that was the car itself. As I exited the vehicle, I immediately saw the source of my future troubles. The ‘Shark Fin’ as I would call it, or the antenna cover cap in more default terms, had decided it was its time to detach from the vehicle and become the road debris that everyone worries about. I had other plans, however, and went back to grab it out of the road. When I found it, it was a fraction of its former self and barely recognizable. This foiled my plans of reattaching it with a tube of adhesive glue and going about my day. After collecting the pieces of my vehicle and the few remaining pieces of hope, I cancelled my plans and limped the Veloster home like a wounded animal.
This is the part of the story where many people would realize that they’re out of their element and call someone. I, rather unfortunately, am not one of those smart people. I backed the Veloster into my garage and began formulating some semblance of a plan. As I sat there in that dimly lit and dusty garage, smelling the ghosts of cheap booze and even cheaper cigarettes, I came up with a “genius” idea. “Today is Wednesday, so this weekend I’ll stop by all the junkyards in the tri-state area! One of them is bound to have a wrecked Veloster that I can harvest the piece off of!” And to cut a very, very, very long story short: no dice, almost. My brother and I hit every single one. It got to the point we were asking whoever was working the desk if they knew of a different junkyard that could have a Veloster. After giving up and going home, swallowing our pride and thinking that we might need to order OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers), we found our ray of sunshine in the rainy weekend. When my phone buzzed and I answered it, on the other end of the line was a man. He said that he had a Veloster in the back that he was planning to crush. He said that we had until 6 p.m. to get the part. By the time he finished that sentence, I was on the way. When we arrived, it was 5:22 p.m. and we stopped in and got pointed to the very farthest point in the yard. We grabbed the tools and headed that direction. The Veloster of legend sat there in one piece in the very corner of the property, except it was missing the Shark Fin. After losing hope in this quest, I turned around to see my knight in broken and rusted armor, a 2012 Hyundai Sonata. As my brother muttered something along the lines of, “Standing in the rain … Wasting my day … Could’ve been at home right now,” I began walking towards the Sonata, admiring how the Shark Fin off that seemed to be the only untouched piece on the vehicle. As I began crawling through the broken glass and trash-filled back seats to undo the antenna cover, my brother began walking over. After a solid 10 minutes of cursing and getting broken glass in places that glass shouldn’t be, I emerged from the vehicle with the part and after paying the owner went on my merry way feeling a sense of pride.
When installing the new part in the car that night, it went as well as most people would suspect. The two pieces were different sizes which sent me down a rabbit hole of Super Glue and shaving the piece down to fit. But once the job was over, and looking at the vehicle now, I can’t help but to feel a sense of pride in the fact that I was the one to do it. Some people might’ve given up midway through and sent their car off somewhere; that would be the smart thing to do. Every time there was an opportunity that I could finish the job that I started I took it, and every morning when I look out to see that car, I’m happy that I did. So the next time that something goes wrong when you really need it to go right, and you don’t have the time or money to call someone to help, look up a tutorial on the internet and really weigh your next decisions because nothing will make you happier than a job well done.
