That's all I've got to say for now...

It's one of those things that comes with the territory. I can't decide whether it's an innocent oversight, a necessary evil, or the product of Bob, a mentally unstable engineer in a cubicle somewhere who is randomly taking his anger out on the unfortunate end-user. I must say, it more resembles deliberate, careful design than some random coincidence.

I was working on my truck today. My timing belt slipped about a month ago. My truck has sat in the garage since then. I just started working on it today. I had to pull all the belts, pulleys, and casing off the front of the block to access the timing belt. You know they put those bolts on the casing on pretty tight.

I was pulling on the wrench really hard to release one of those housing bolts. It was stuck on there pretty tight. I had foreseen this from the beginning. (This is the most dreaded aspect of auto mechanics, in my mind.) As I was tugging at this bolt I heard the slight pop echo through the engine block. At that moment time stopped...

Somewhere between that popping sound and the ensuing collision, my life flashed before my eyes - well, maybe not, but my knuckles did...

"It's loose! Stop pulling...not fast enough...too late...ouch..." Thump! The back of my knuckles collided with that sharp piece of steel Bob strategically positioned from the safety of his cubicle. In fact, there's one of these pieces of steel strategically positioned next to half the bolts on the engine. And those bolts are tightened extra tight, so as to cause the unfortunate end-user to be exerting as much pressure as possible at the time the bolt releases, thus ensuring a more extravagant result. This time the resounding ring from the collision nearly equaled that of the bolt releasing.

These collisions are common during auto repairs. Sometimes the object is sharp enough to cut. This time it wasn't - it just rearranged the skin on the back of my hand and permanently embedded some of the grease into my pores.

Today I was fortunate - this only happened to me once today. Others are not so fortunate. Some suffer from multiple of these atrocities daily, not knowing any other way exists. I think it's time we put a stop to this. I'm going to go pay Bob a visit - just as soon as I get my truck back together...