2021-07-26 — A First

Hi, folks. 🙂

Happy Monday!

I had an interesting first today… one which I hope will also be my last. 😶

But we’ll get to that.

Started off a bit slower today. I spent probably 45 minutes trying to get our lawnmower back to at least decently-working order. It keeps blowing through starter switches, so I decided to put in an inline fuse, so that if it surges again, it’ll take out the fuse instead of the switch. I put in another 50-amp switch, and I wired in a 30-amp fuse, but that blew immediately. So I put in a 40-amp fuse, and that one blew immediately. So I removed the inline fuse assembly I bought because 40-amp was the max it could handle, and I hardwired in a 50-amp maxi fuse, and it didn’t blow.

Cross your fingers. Hopefully, it’ll work for a long time to come. Maxi fuses ain’t cheap.

After that, I worked on a ’98 Grand Prix, trying to find an AC leak, but it wasn’t a fast leak, so it wasn’t showing up right away, so I’ll need to go back after it all leaks out again. I put dye in the system, so I should be able to find the leak.

Cross your fingers, anyway.

Now for that… first.

I was in the Bentonville AutoZone doing returns and purchases and whatnot, and there was a man there who started getting angry with one of the store employees. At first he was just frustrated, angry because apparently one employee had told him that he could buy a key online and have it cut there in the store, which isn’t true, so the employee who was on duty let him know it wasn’t possible, and the customer started loudly expressing his frustration. But it didn’t end there. He started to get belligerent, ripping apart the employee, and indirectly accusing him of lying, and on and on, and I just got fed up. I was probably 40 feet away at another counter, but I fairly loudly, though not yelling, said something like, “Hey! Stop!” And I started walking his way, saying something like (though I don’t remember exactly) “Don’t talk to him like that. Get out of the store. Get out.” I think I had my right arm in the air pointing and doing the sort of “get out/go away'” motion.

What happened next shocked me a little bit.

I was probably 6 feet away from him or so, and he lunged at me and decked me in the face. 😶

I think I was pretty startled but managed to react by ducking back and away from the punch as it was thrown so that when it hit my cheek bone, I was already moving away, so it hit me but not nearly has hard as if I’d stayed still and taken the full force of the punch.

The store employee said something like, leave, or I’m gonna call the cops, and I said “call the cops.”

The man went outside, and I went out with my cell phone and got his license plate number and relayed it to the police dispatch. An officer was there literally in like 2 minutes or less maybe, and he took statements and asked me if I wanted to press charges.

At first, I was like… does that mean I’d have to go to court, testify and all that? The officer was like, it could, but then he pointed to his body cam and was like, but we already have everything you said, so it might not be necessary.

I told the officer that I just want a simple life and don’t want to complicate it, so I wouldn’t be pressing charges. He gave me a card with the case number and the police phone number on it in case I changed my mind and wanted to press charges, and I took the card and went back into the store, adrenaline still pumping pretty significantly.

Though the adrenaline was pumping, and I could feel my face starting to swell a little, with a bit of an ache and feeling almost like I had a rug burn there, in the midst of that, I had this nagging feeling that followed me for like 10 or 15 minutes after the officer left that maybe it would be best if I did press charges. I kept thinking of all the times you hear about the guy who was let off just a month before on something, only to commit a murder or rape or something a month later, and I was like. If he can lose it over something so stupid, attack me, and blame me for his attacking me (he said something to the effect of “that’s what you get when you charge someone from the military”).

I guess he forgot that he was the one who lunged at me. 🙃

Anyway, so I called back and chose to press charges. Not sure if it was the right thing to do. I didn’t really want to, but it felt like the right thing to do? And I think the nagging feeling went away after I did. Hopefully, that’ll prevent something from happening with someone else, something more serious.

The officer told me he thought I did the right thing when I stepped in and told the man to stand down and leave the store and whatnot, so that was nice.

With things as crazy as they are these days, it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to follow him outside to get his license plate number. Might not have been a great idea to step in in the first place, but I hate seeing injustice like that. You don’t treat people like that. It reminds me of that experience a couple years ago with the Indian man and woman (India Indian) where I watched him smack her hard on the butt ( I thought maybe they were joking around, but she’d been sitting at the McDonald’s table inside by herself visibly upset before he came in and got her, and I watched him smack her hard on the butt as I was walking out the store behind her, and then I saw him slap her hard in the face, and I went off on him, blocking him so he couldn’t leave the store. He even sent her to plead his case for him, but I wasn’t having it. Violent patriarchal dominance might be acceptable in some cultures. It’s a crime here, and rightly so.

Can you tell just thinking about the experience gets me going? 🙃

Anyway, that was… a first today. I don’t think I’ve had anyone take a swing at me since… elementary school? David Baker? And I deserved that one.

So that was the lunch-time theatrics. After that, it was diagnosing a crank, no start on an old S10 (bad compression, needs a motor). Then a crank, no start on a ’96 Buick Roadmaster. He’d just had a fuel pump put in, but it was bad out of the box, apparently.

Then it was a grinding noise (stuck caliper) on a 2006 Honda Civic. Then another AC diagnosis on two vehicles from the same owner, a GMC Envoy and a Kia Sorento. Couldn’t be sure about the first, and the second had the same issue as the first car of the day, a slow leak that I’ll have to come back for after adding dye to the system.

Last car was a headlight bulb replacement for a 2010 Malibu. I had one more scheduled, but it got bumped to tomorrow morning, so I went home about 8:45.

Wahoo!

And here I am. I finally have an entry that’s longer than a few brief paragraphs.

Hope you enjoyed the read. 🙃

Lift the World

Good night 🙂

~ stephen