An Appeal to the God of Wiper Blades (300 words, topic of choice)

The god of wiper blades hates me

It started last fall, during the rainy season. My driver's-side blade squeaked something fierce. It was particularly annoying that day, though in retrospect I'm not sure why.

I set off for work, heading down the back roads the way that I always do in order to avoid the Main Street traffic, which isn't heavy outside of tourist season but can be annoying nonetheless. Squeak. Pause. Squeak. Pause. Squeak. It didn't matter whether I sped them up Squeak.Squeak.Squeak. Or slowed them down. Squeak...pause...squeak...pause...squeak. They squeaked.

(Aside: I swear I thought I had written about this, but maybe not--maybe I just told the story so many times that it feels indelible.)

In a flash of brilliance I thought "Hey! I know! I'll snap the blade--that occasionally works." And, in fact, it does work sometimes. Unfortunately, "sometimes" is not equal to "while driving down the road at 50 mph." I know this because when I rolled down the window and reached out and grabbed the blade as it swiped toward the driver's side, it snapped off in my hand.

To make a long and much-told story short, that blade is, to the best of my knowledge, still resting peacefully somewhere along the side of CR-10.

No, the wiper-blade-god-hates-me story I wanted to tell is this one:

This morning, I decided to be lazy and not bother scraping the snow and ice off my car. Instead, I started it, cranked up the defroster, the defogger and the seat, then finished getting ready for work, which includes running around in the back yard with the dogs for a few minutes. This is apropos of nothing, just a part of my morning.

By the time I was ready to go, the windshield was clear enough to see, so I threw my stuff in the car and headed off.

I don't know what it is about CR-10.

Eventually, enough snow had blown off my hood that I needed to use the wipers, so I did. And so the arm made a swipe across the window while the blade itself stayed behind, frozen in place. Just...frozen.

I'm still not sure how that happened, given the way the wiper blade housing works on my car. What I do know is that I fixed it with a twist-tie (thankyouverymuch) and a whole lot of automotive optimism. I also made it to work frozen, soaked and a little grubbier than usual.

As for the wiper blade, I will have it replaced (again). And I will wait, ever so slightly on edge, for the next wiper mishap knowing that whatever it is that I imagine, the reality will be just a bit more absurd.