Deserted Island or How to Goose a Plunger

For the record, today was one of those days when I did not utter one word to another human being (except for a 5 minute phone conversation). And I never left my apartment except to go to the laundry room downstairs and the mailbox just outside. Furthermore, I had hot & sour cabbage soup with tofu for lunch. For dinner I opened four cans: beets, green beans, corn, and pears. Solitary confinement? Heaven? A day-in-the-life of a PhD student? You be the judge. Rest assured, however -- I did think plenty of deep thoughts.

While I can happily tolerate a smattering of these deserted island days, I don't particularly like a slew of them. After a while, my deep thoughts tend to border on pathological. I start to subsist on junk food. And I'm prone to spending WAY too much time online just to feel connected to the outside world.

Today's solitude was easily outdone, however, by my holiday weekend in Ohio where I enjoyed a non-stop party with my amazing aunt and a bunch of cousins. Mike and Melanie (never mind that she is on the verge of having baby #3) made the trek from D.C. with their two adorable boys. The local Taylors also joined the fun. One thing about this side of the family: they are exceptionally good at eating and talking, only occasionally coming up for air when absolutely necessary. It was a glorious respite from dissertating.

My stay was extended a day by some minor car troubles. (If you consider a completely dead battery minor trouble.) My aunt, the retired German professor, who is a renaissance woman, single-handedly recharged my battery. Instead of acting grateful for the rejuvenation, however, my little Subaru started flashing the parking lights and making an obnoxious clicking sound. And it refused to stop. An auto parts store suggested that we "disconnect the positive" for a few minutes to see if the car would reset itself. "It's really simple," they reassured us. (What? Were we not the perfect picture of auto mechanical prowess?!)

Once home, we performed this delicate operation.

Step 1: open hood
Step 2: identify battery
Step 3: wonder which part is the positive thing to be disconnected
Step 4: envision ourselves as the nuns in the Sound of Music who tampered with the soldiers' cars the night the von Trapp family escaped Austria; feel tempted to burst into song
Step 5: refrain from bursting into song for fear of blowing ourselves up
Step 6: professor aunt remembers that red means positive
Step 7: survey tool options; reject hammer, choose various wrench-like objects
Step 8: unscrew a dinglehopper, remove something else, wait ten minutes
Step 9: screw purported positive thing back onto battery with my bare hands
Step 10: car won't start
Step 11: tighten screw with wrench-like tool
Step 12: car starts!
Step 13: clicking noise resumes along with flashing lights
Step 14: completion of said delicate operation is tainted by the sting of defeat

When my cousin Hank came over, he informed us that we had, in actuality, not disconnected the battery at all. Whatever. In any case, my cousin the Superhero, performed a series of diagnostic tests and determined that the problem was connected with "remote sensors." We eventually found a Subaru repair guy who was actually working the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This helpful chap revealed the secret to calming my out of control remote sensors. "Just goose the plunger right next to the brown wire," he said. (The brown wire happened to be located in some obscure location under the dash.) Hank heroically found the switch which did indeed stop the frenetic clicking and flashing of lights. In the process, he also magically fixed the door of my hatchback that I hadn't been able to open for weeks.

Hank subscribes to the "you can toss a man a fish, but it's better to teach him to catch one himself" philosophy. Suspecting that I could find myself in a similar situation at some future point, Hank grabbed my finger and showed me the mysterious plunger switch. "Now goose it!" he commanded. Goose it? Huh? I tried to imagine what a goose would do with the silly switch. My dumbfounded look must have resembled that of a person who is prone to unsuspectingly leaving car lights on for prolonged periods. "Just push the button - HARD!" he barked. And goose it, I did!

Should my doctoral aspirations fall apart, I'm pretty sure I'm now qualified for a level one auto mechanic's license. A very comforting thought indeed.