Shinn the Writer

(It’s Not What You Think)

 

It is said that in a small town there were two churches, one Catholic, the other Presbyterian. Each had an outdoor message board, often displaying messages which in isolation made perfect theological or social sense, but which would at times conflict. Case in point, one week the Catholic message was “Alcohol is your worst enemy!” The Presbyterian message was “Make your worst enemy your best friend.”

 

Whatever, I have cut my alcohol consumption significantly over the last several years. I’m down to a glass of wine every three days on the average, a level accepted by all my ologists (well, I haven’t discussed it with my dermatologist or urologist, but my cardiologist and gastroenterologist, as well as my primary care physician all think it’s quite an acceptable level.

 

But wine consumption isn’t what I want to discuss here. No, this has to do with my reluctance to follow instructions. You see, a few months back, my FasTrak badge came loose from my windshield. For those who may not know, the San Francisco Bay area has seven toll bridges which have lanes mostly equipped with electronic “readers” which take in signals from transmitters placed on car windshields called badges. Some highways have express lanes which use this system of transmitters and readers. This system is called FasTrak.

 

The badge comes with a small strip of Velcro (with the soft “loop” material) on each side. It also has matching strips with the plastic “hook” side that attaches to the loops on one side and has the glue that sticks to the windshield. Well, some time ago, the glue stopped adhering to my windshield and the whole badge came tumbling down. No problem, I simply pressed it against the windshield again, and the glue was still strong enough to adhere.

 

Well, for about ten minutes. The glue must have gotten a bit old. First chance I had, I separated the hooks from the loops, cut a couple of new hoop strips and tried again. The good news is that I don’t use the toll bridges much, so simply holding up the badge to the windshield manually wasn’t a big deal, just a bit of a nuisance. And that’s what I did until I got around to fixing the badge with the replacement hook strips. And the new badge setup worked just fine.

 

Well, for about an hour. When I got around to trying again, I wiped the area where the glue went, figuring that it was just a bit too dirty and tried again. Again, success. For maybe a couple of hours. Time to get a new badge and start from scratch. I went to the FasTrak website to see about ordering a new one which would hopefully have a better kind of glue more suited for glass. In looking for the ordering form, I happened to come across something that utterly astonished me. It was called… what was that word… oh yeah, INSTRUCTIONS!