Don't hire me as a mechanic.

Ever take your car in to the shop to have it worked on, and the mechanic replaces something but it's not the right something that made you bring it in to him to begin with? So then he replaces another something? Maybe he gets it right the second time, and maybe he doesn't. This story isn't really all that familiar to me, I've always had a great mechanic in Utah (Caesar there in Provo). Unless I'm doing the work myself.

Suzi was complaining of horrible squeaking coming from the cars brakes. Metallic, grinding, painful to listen to inside the car. However, I never ride in that car so it's been easy for me to put it off. Finally I agree to get it done, run down to the parts shop pick up the new front brakes($24), and drive it into my buddy Mike's garage. He and I spend the night working on the car. It's nice to do something like that and save a bunch of money. Get a little dirty, use some tools that I haven't used in a while, pull out the tool box, drink some sodas, you know kind of manly stuff.

I thought by the sound of things I would have to replace the rotor, but it looked fine, felt fine, and I didn't really feel like doing it. We put the new brakes on with little to no problem. Goes fairly quickly except he and I are chatting and farting around while we get the job done.

We complete the job, and I backed the car out of the garage. Ahhhh, there's that feeling of accomplishing something kind of manly, you know working on your car getting dirty, and saving a ton of money. Like I said before. Hands are dirty brakes work good.

So he and I pull out of the drive way, and pull out on to the road. I speed up then hit the brakes to feel the new and improved brakes that I and Mike put in. For some reason brakes feel better when you put them in yourself. So I put down the petal hard and hear grind, scrape, and feel a little that little vibration through the brake petal that tells you something ain't right! Of course I'm thinking what the blankey blank is that!? Didn't we just fix that!? Mike says laughing "that's not coming from the front, that's coming from the back." We pull over look at the back right rotor and yep there's the problem. Yeah, the back.

Has anyone ever had to replace brakes in the back. I mean really, of course someone somewhere has, but how often....... Ugh. Well, it's this logic that got me to replace the wrong brakes.

Mike promised not to tell anyone that I had made this wrong diagnosis. It really wasn't a diagnosis, more of a wrong asumption. Anyhow, really you make a simple mistake like this on a kind of minor manly task, and it could hurt your "manlyness credibility" right. I'm just waiting to hear it from Suzi. She's problably gonna say something like "What do I need to fly my mom out here to teach you how to work on brakes." You know something low when it comes to my manly pride.

So he promises to keep it a secret, but to be honest it's after midnight here and I'm fairly certain he's called a couple buddies already to tell them.

I don't blame him. It would be hard not to.