This past weekend, I came to discover the second thing I don’t like about Wilma. I don’t think I have told you about her. Wilma is my silver cheetah. I guess that doesn’t tell you much either. There is a story to all this. Blame it on the books if you will. I think too many of the books I read seem to have the heroine naming their cars, which somehow lead me to naming mine and everyone else’s vehicle in the family. It’s even more amusing when family and coworkers start referring to her by name. Wilma is round girl with a truck chassis (Don’t ask me, that’s just what the salesman told me.) She is one of a kind that is no longer in production but she has many doppelgangers around town. She’s a tom boy who wears her bow tie proudly with her Miranda Lambert tattoo on the back.

I fell in love with Wilma when I saw her and just had to have her. She was my first as-close-to-new as I could get. Her only downfall was her dang cup holders. She just can’t hold 2 Route 44 Sonic drinks very well, but I look past her faults. She doesn’t guzzle gas like most and has proven to welcome all ages with comfy cushion. Even Grandma likes Wilma and that says a lot for someone who has a bad back.

She was coined a cheetah one night when Hickory and I were driving in a parking garage. He watches a lot of Big Cat Diaries. These two guys were walking in front of Wilma at a leisurely pace and didn’t seem to want to move. I said Wilma must be quiet because they hadn’t noticed us yet. Hickory said she was like a cheetah. It’s been our little joke ever since.

Alas, this weekend I found problem numero dos with Ms. Wilma. Her dang headlights… One of them had burned out so being the independent girl that I am I decided to change the bulb myself. Unlike my other vehicles that I have owned in the past, Wilma wasn’t going to make this easy.

You have to turn the wheel in so you can get down on her level and get your hind end on the concrete. Then you have to find about three to four different hand tools and work off a screw and 2 plastic rivets. The screw doesn’t have a screw head and no socket will fit it so you will end up using a pair of pliers and take a good 5 minutes getting it off. (My Ag teacher would already be shaking his head in disapproval of improper use of hand tools.) Then you will try to get the rivets off with no success with the first couple of pliers. By the time you do get the first one off you will decide to give up on taking off the second one. You find that you can squeeze your hand into the panel and feel around for the cable that is her light.

Thank goodness for the handbook… So you manage to get the bulb out of the panel and try to “pull out” the old bulb from the cable as the book instructs but will find that it isn’t that easy. After meandering around the garage you find what is you think the tools to best help pull apart the tight fitted light only to pull apart part of the bulb. You will freak for about 30 seconds until you realize you aren’t done and begin the task of trying to figure how the hell to get this damn part off.

You are between a rock and a hard place because you are 30 minutes in and all you would like to do is rip the shit straight out of the panel but then you would have a big electrical mess so you try to keep yourself composed… 3 hand tools later and some wiggling with a screw driver and it comes off.

You successfully put the new bulb on and manage to blindly work it back into the headlamp where you spend a couple of seconds making sure its tight and then work the rivet back in. Thankfully it wasn’t too mangled. Put the screw back in with the pliers and done.

All that is left to do is shut the hood and wash the grime off your hands.

Wilma. I love you, but your headlights are a bitch.

~Kalamity