Gimme, Gimme!

I remember as a kid going to the Copper Country Mall with my family. Each time, I assumed that I was going to get something out of the deal; namely, a toy, purchased by my parents. I also remember the first time that it didn't happen. I was crushed, going home empty-handed, as the world as I knew it had changed. It was now crueler and more hash. There may have even been a tear or two shed on my part.

High school can be so rough.

Ha! Just some misdirection age humor there! Not original, I know, but always effective.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is about windshield wipers. Really. Let me explain.

Sometime before Christmas I decided that I needed a good pair of boots for the Minnesota winter. It was a snowy Saturday, and I braved the slippery roads to drive a few dozen miles to a Fleet Farm. There were approximately eight million people milling about, all placing themselves in the most inconvenient of spots, in a conspiracy whose only purpose was to drive me insane, but I pushed through them to the footwear aisle, arriving there only slightly deranged. Unfortunately, I came away empty-handed. The only boots I wanted were not stocked in my size.

Conventional logic says that I would have just left after snapping my fingers and saying, “Oh, shucks!”

However, this is when I turned back into the kid at the Copper Country Mall who always needed a toy. There was no way I was leaving that store without purchasing something. Not after driving through the snow and slush just to get there.

So I bought windshield wipers. The problem is, of course, that I didn’t really need windshield wipers. The ones on my car were not great, and an upgrade was not the worst idea in the world, but they were still functional.

So, as you can probably guess, I never installed them. To this day they are still sitting in the backseat of my car. Sometimes I notice them out of the corner of my eye and wonder if it's sad or funny. Probably a bit of both.

I could always install them, just to try and save face, but it’s probably too late for that. Plus, my current wipers are doing okay, so the effort involved doesn’t seem to be worth the reward.

It’s getting to the point where I’m intrigued as to how long they can sit in my car before I actually use them. Six months? A year? Even longer?

As a mature adult, I feel like what I did was irresponsible, not to mention a terrible investment. However, the kid in me is smiling happily from ear to ear, because he got to take something home.

So who wins? Easy. The kid. No regrets!