The buildings mock me.
But I will not be mocked.

Today’s soundtrack: like a rolling stone
Today at 3:42pm: On FDR Drive, changing lanes like Ben Affleck


battery will get you nowhere
Still getting used to being an adult.

Adult Rule #33: Whenever you make a mistake, you have to pay for it. The currency is either time, cash or more often than not, both. These days I can barely spare either.

The mistake I made this time was to leave my hazards on. Was backing up to get into a parking spot, so I hit the blinkers. After I’d claimed my rectangle of asphalt, I was so intent on getting to my destination that I turned the car off without noticing the blinking red triangle on my dashboard.

When I returned to the car hours later, the battery was deader than Qusay Hussein.

A loyal friend drove out from Queens to give me a jump, and after that I returned the car to the garage. That was about a month ago. I haven’t used the car much since, but the few times I’ve gone to retrieve it, it needed a jump-start every time. One night I drove around for about an hour to recharge it, but unlike Jesus Christ in The Passion, it stayed dead and failed to spawn any new religions.

Well, today was the first free day I had to handle the battery problem.

Manhattan’s got a little of everything and a lot of some things, but those “some things” are not auto parts stores. The few I could find in the yellow pages told me a replacement battery for my car would run me a hundred dollars. The last time I bought a car battery Mariah Carey was on the charts, but I could swear car batteries only ran thirty, forty bucks at most, and inflation doesn’t climb that fast. I remember “Dreamlover” and AC Delco.

I called some shops in Brooklyn, to see if expensive Manhattan storefront rents were boosting the prices I was given. But the Brooklynites wanted eighty dollars, which I still felt was too high. Eighty dollars should get you a battery and a full-body massage. (Though if the auto parts guys were the ones delivering the massage, I’d take a gift certificate instead.)

Just for fun I called the dealership to see what they’d charge. They wanted $120 for the battery, and if I wanted them to install it (which I didn’t), that’d run me another fifty bucks for labor. I said “Thanks anyway” but what I really meant was “Kiss my ass.”

Next I figured I’d see if I could recharge the battery by simply driving around again. The first time I’d tried it had been nighttime and I was driving around the city, which meant a) the headlights were on, sucking up juice and b) the frequent brake-slamming required in navigating Manhattan traffic meant my brake lights were constantly coming on, sucking up yet more juice. Plus I stupidly had the radio blaring.

So this time I opted for smooth, high-revving, uninterrupted highway driving, with no headlights. The guys at the garage gave me a jump, then I hit FDR Drive and broke north, out of the city. Manhattan gave way to the Bronx, the Bronx gave way to Westchester.

I maintained strict radio silence the whole way, which just left me with my thoughts. The thing I discovered is I enjoy spending time with fifth gear more than I enjoy spending time with my thoughts.

After forty-five minutes I started to get hungry, but knew I couldn’t stop at a restaurant; I couldn’t afford to turn the car off, in case the battery wasn’t yet charged, and suburbs or no I wasn’t gonna leave the damn thing running.

In Thornwood, New York I spied a McDonald’s, and finally realized what a drive-thru is good for. I ordered my meal at one window, paid at a second and received my food at the third. I pulled into the back of the parking lot and left the engine running while I scarfed my Big ‘N Tasty (which was, incidentally, neither big nor tasty).

While I was eating and trying not to spill ketchup on the stickshift, I observed my fellow McDonald’s patrons, suburbanites all of them. It amazes me how you can go just forty-five minutes outside the city and the people instantly get larger around the waist. The people that came through resembled what I’ve come to know as average Americans: a rather large housewife, and a grip of angry white kids who looked and dressed like heavier versions of Eminem.

After my “meal” I continued driving, determined to get at least an hour outside the city. Fifteen minutes later I’d succeeded, and found myself approaching the town where I’d spent my adolescence. (My brother and I were born in the city but pulled out at the age when children normally begin getting in trouble. Two Asian kids with strong Staten Island accents moving to an all-white suburb is trouble, but that’s a different story.)

I knew for a fact there was a large auto parts store in this town, or at least there had been fifteen years ago; in high school, when my Datsun was ailing I took pride in acquiring the parts and fixing it myself. I even had this big toolbox full of a shiny Craftsman tool set I’d saved up for. So I pulled off the exit, to see if the auto store was still there.

In 1979 my pops started up a small video store in a tiny little shopping mall. It was the first video store for miles around. The success of this store was responsible for both my family and I getting three squares a day, and for ensuring that I saw every movie made between 1979 and 1989. Which is why I can now only process my life through movie cliches, and, when stuck in a jam, will occasionally ask myself “What would Michael J. Fox in High School U.S.A. do? How can I defeat the Beau Middletons in this world?”

I drove past the spot where the mall had been, and it was gone. Recently demolished, by the looks of the site; a huge, flat expanse of dirt, with bulldozers still tidying the mess. I know it’s dumb but that was kind of a shock for me.

I thought for sure the auto parts store would be gone too, but it was still there. Then, shock #2: The guy manning the counter was Asian. Back when I lived here, the only Asian guy I’d seen on a regular basis, besides my brother, was my dad.

This guy wasn’t my dad, but he did send an employee out to the parking lot to hook some type of device up to my battery.

“Yep, it’s shot,” said the guy, reading his device. “It won’t hold a charge.”

The only thing doing any charging was me, meaning I put a new battery on my credit card. “How much do they run?” I asked, before they rang it up.

“Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche batteries are expensive,” he said. Such irony. I bought the VW because it was the cheapest real car on the market, but due to corporate parentage I’d be paying the same for my battery as the I-bankers with the GT’s and the TT’s.

I dropped 75 bucks on the battery, and another 12 for a cheap socket wrench set, because my shiny Craftsman tools that I’d saved up for with busboy money had eventually gotten lost in one of my moves (there were five).

Out in the parking lot I popped the hood, rolled up my sleeves and got to work. Changing a battery is normally a simple gig, but I discovered mine was locked into place by a flange at the bottom. Getting to the flange required removing a piece of the headlight casing, which in turn was connected to another plastic cowling with a wire snaked through it, all of it held in place with screws, not bolts. After cursing some, I went back in the store and dug a blackened hand into my pocket to pay for a Philips-head.

Minutes later I had the new battery in place. Then I spent more time than I should have figuring out how the headlight casing could be reassembled with the wire snaked through it. After sorting that puzzle out I finally slammed the hood shut and turned the ignition key to ON, half-expecting to hear that dreaded, empty click which meant I’d have to find someone in this parking lot to beat up out of sheer frustration. But the engine started like Shaquille O’Neal.

Afterwards I lugged the old battery back inside, to be recycled. You ever lift a car battery? It’s the size of a box of Breyer’s but feels like forty pounds of anti-matter. I can’t understand how something that small could be that heavy.

I also can’t understand how something as trivial as changing a car battery took me eighty miles, a hundred-and-four dollars and three hours door-to-door. And now I’ve got, bouncing around in my trunk, a cheap-ass socket wrench set and a screwdriver I didn’t want. But I made a mistake, and now it’s paid in full.