levels of doing

There are levels to it

I’m not sure if I have talked about this previously, but I saw a girl driving down the road the other day who had something funky going on with the back of her car. I couldn’t quite make it out at first glance. Thankfully, we were driving down Chelsea Road and a train stopped us, so after a few seconds, I had a full view and plenty of time to decipher it.

Turns out, it was a flashlight. A junky one, at that. The kind you might’ve gotten at the dollar store for no other reason than you were there and it was a dollar. You didn’t need that piece of junk, but somehow it found its way into your basket with all the other stuff you didn’t plan to get—but still have—as you wait in the checkout line. Forty-three dollars and a little bit of regret later, and you’re out the door of the dollar store that doesn’t actually sell things for a dollar anymore.

The flashlight was on the back of this girl’s car, angled just off to the side of her license plate with a level of clear Scotch tape that only the most devout of Christmas-present-wrapping mothers would know existed. It was a lot of tape.

The flashlight was acting as her license plate light.

Her setup looked tacky, and if you take a moment to think about it, it must have been a total pain in the rear to operate. Come nightfall, she would have to remember to turn the light on before traveling and off once she finished. Yet it was there, and judging by the amount of tape, it was there to stay. It wasn’t a temporary fix. It was the fix.

Now, certainly, if it was just a burnt-out bulb or fuse, she would have put a proper fix back there. Or at least I’d think so. No, it must have been a deeper, more difficult issue than something so simple, so she took the best course of action available to her: Scotch tape and a dollar store flashlight.

That little flashlight has stuck with me a lot longer than it should have. In her effort, I saw so many things. Ingenuity and gumption. Effort where effort wasn’t warranted. It’s just a tag light. Are you really gonna get in trouble for that? Who would even care? Well, maybe she already has, and that’s why she has the setup she does.

But then, why not fix it the right way? She puts effort into her “fix” as it is. It would be a fun project on a lazy weekend—wrenching on little problems like that which are never critical to the vehicle, but where the fix is a pain in the butt. It makes one feel a little accomplished, all at no risk of damaging something that will keep you from going to work Monday morning.

Bulb, fuse, harness—just keep going down the list and it’ll get fixed eventually.

No, none of that, though. She fixed it her way and did, in fact, fix the problem. Missing tag light no more! Just turn a flashlight on and you’re good to go.

The thing sticking with me is twofold. Sometimes, you do what you can with what you’ve got, and that’s good enough. Better, even, if you don’t have the budget or time or skill to chase down and properly patch the real problem. You took what is and did it. It’s not the proper way, but not all things demand the capital “R” Right way of doing them. The tag light gets a pass and is better off for being done than not done.

Sometimes done is better than not done. Even if done looks a little tacky, just ask yourself: does it work the way you need it to?

There are, of course, those things which you don’t do any way you please. You do those things the capital “T” The Way they are prescribed, and you don’t deviate. I don’t think the tag light is one of them, but if it was, you’d work the problem until it was as the manufacturer intended. The steps to remedying the busted light are there, but they require something of you.

How do you decide which is which, though?

I think it comes down to what carries the weight. A license plate light is just cosmetic; it tells people where you are, but it doesn't keep the car on the road. You can fudge that. You can tape that. But you don't use a dollar store flashlight to light your way down the road. Nor do you use tape to hold your brake pads in place.

Maybe that's the rubric. If it fails, does it just look bad, or does the whole thing come apart? For the things that keep us on the road—we'd better read the manual and do it the way the Manufacturer intended.

For the rest? Pass the tape.