This may come as a surprise to some of you, but occasionally, I can be a bit of a drama queen. I know, I know...that sounds just SO out of character for me, but it's true, I promise.
This year, for my birthday, I really wanted one of those adapters installed in my car that would let me play my iPhone through my car stereo. I have a long commute to and from work, so I spend a lot of time in the car. I wanted to be able to listen to books on tape, podcasts, the music I have downloaded in my iTunes, etc. My fabulous family generously chipped in and got me gift cards to Best Buy so I could have one installed. It was a glorious day when it was installed, and I have been enjoying it ever since.
Until this past weekend.
I am not sure what happened, but it stopped working. I did everything the same: plugged the wire into the headphone jack, flipped the little switch, tuned to the right button on my stereo, and NOTHING happened. Actually, that's not true. I could faintly hear the audio trying to play through my stereo speakers, but it was so low that I couldn't make out what it was. I was SO mad!
Naively, I thought, "Maybe, the car is just having a bad day, and it'll work tomorrow." For the record, cars don't have moods or fix themselves overnight.
For two days, I didn't say anything to S because he is convinced my car is cursed (he might be right, but that's a different story for a different day). I didn't want to give him any more ammunition for that argument. However, on Sunday, on our way to church, we took two different cars (I was headed to some place after church), and he stopped to fill up for gas. While I was sitting behind him waiting for him to finish up, I started fiddling with the wires, and discovered that if I lifted up on the plug that went into my stereo, that sound actually came out. I felt like kind of a genius for figuring that out, but was also frustrated thinking "Am I going to have to drive around holding this up, just so I can hear the audio?"
It was about that time that S noticed the intermittent sounds coming from my car, and came back to investigate. (cue the drama queen music....) I sheepishly rolled down the window to explain what I was doing, and even demonstrated the way I was going to have to drive around for the rest of my life, or at least until I could get back to the place that installed the dang thing to get them to fix it, which was probably going to cost an arm and a leg (maybe even more!). I confessed that it had been that way for a few days, and that I had been hiding it from him because I didn't want him to think that my car was cursed.
He just smiled, and asked if I had checked to see if the cord was working properly. I was baffled. Check the cord? What on Earth could he possibly mean? This wasn't a cord issue. This was a "everything I own is always broken, and now, I am probably going to have to either get a new car or pay a gazillion dollars to get this fixed" issue. S quickly retrieved a similar cord from his car so that we could test it out, and sure enough, it WORKED! Problem solved!
What a fantastic reminder for me to look for the simpler solution first, or at least give it a shot before going into drama queen mode and thinking only of the worst case scenario. Sometimes, you don't need to trade in the whole car, and sometimes, it's not going to be a problem for life...sometimes, it's just a simple, $10 cord that can fix the whole deal.
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Am I the only one that does this? What are you making into a bigger deal than you need to?
