i'm finally cool

It was one of those "on" days. I got up early, got to work early, got the office up and running early, organized everything on my desk, and finished a few tasks that have been hanging over my head for weeks.

A couple of those tasks involved driving down to the County-City building in South Bend to bother the Assessor, the Auditor, and the Recorder, but everyone was magically in a good mood (or was after I smiled and talked to them for a few moments) and the tasks didn't take nearly as long as I thought they would.

The one fly in my ointment was that I'd run out of wiper fluid on the way down, and the churned up slush from everyone else's tires had crusted on my windshield. But, having remembered that I'd kept a little bit from my last refill in the trunk, I tossed my papers and my purse in the car, locked it up, and went about popping open the hood and pouring the rest of the wiper fluid in the tank.

I am no car expert. That's the only useful thing I know how to do. I can't change a tire, or check my oil, or monitor my brake fluid. No, I rely on male friends and mechanics for that. But it looks pretty spiffy, me matter-of-factly lifting and bracing the hood, dumping fluids where they belong, dropping the hood so it snaps shut.

And apparently the men who could see me thought so too. A scary-looking gentleman preparing to cross the street next to me said as he approached, "That's cool. A woman who can fix her own car."

I replied with a grin, "Thanks; I do what I can."

He then proceeded to tell the guy who had just parked behind me, and who had also been watching, how cool I was. That gentleman, who looked like a basement computer nerd, wholeheartedly agreed. I thanked them both, waved, and headed back to Michigan with a clean windshield and a mightily boosted ego.

Yup. After all these years, I have been declared cool by strangers, for the simplest task a person can perform on a car besides turning it on. Hey, sometimes cool is easy, right? I can live with easy.