You’ve Got to be Kidding Me

Well, I don’t think I would’ve been bringing this up. One of the times that I let my seriousness get too far with me is when I owned my Ranger. That truck got me really frustrated more than once. I wasn’t able to just be like oh well, it happens. This, this was different though. I mean yes, I should have just looked at it and just let it be. I mean, it was a 20-year-old truck, it’s going to have problems.

So, anyways, this is what happened. I worked on my truck a lot, but I was working on my truck this one time trying to get my fuel filter changed. Well, as you would figure with a 20-year-old truck, things would be stuck. Well, this was so stuck, it literally ripped my fuel line off and guess what? I got really mad that I now had to replace the fuel line. What a great way to start off the week right? Anyways, I should’ve just looked at the part and said, “wow, guess that was really stuck on there huh?” I didn’t though, I took it way too serious for what had happened. I mean at the time it happened, it seemed like I was in the right there but no, I was not. I was in the wrong here, I mean the poor truck was 20 years old, has been in Maine most of its life, and wasn’t in the best shape to begin with. So yeah, it’d make sense that hey you idiot, things are going to be stuck.

Furthermore, there were further events causing this frustration with this truck. Couple months later, I am dumping like 2000 dollars into it for a sticker, fixing leaf spring shackles, etc. When I bought the truck, it was ready for the junkyard. My seriousness with it ended up with me selling it, and I probably had maybe another 2-300 dollars left to put into it before it was back into a decent shape, but again. Short temper and the inability to just shake it off really messed it up. I regret selling the truck because it was a fun truck to play around in.

Another event also involving this truck was when a couple of kids were just messing around blocking the exit to the shop, I had asked them to move once already, so, I uh, got quite aggressive let’s say, but I got them to move. Again, I could’ve handled it a different way, and they probably would have moved the same, so again. All I had to do was take a second and breathe. Take a second to realize hey, they’re just messing around with you, don’t take it seriously. So, I took this to be a lesson and to just learn to shake stuff off. If it didn’t harm you, you don’t care about it, yeah it may cost you money, but it’s just money, things will break, it’s going to happen. That’s how I worked out my inability to shake things off and just smile.

Poff, Stephen. “January 15th 2008 – Visited Upon the Son.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 16 Jan. 2009, www.flickr.com/photos/stephenpoff/3200191485/. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)