Headlights

I left the bowling alley around 9:30 last night.

I took a slightly longer way home, so I could listen to music for a bit.

The moon was almost full and the air felt comforting.

As I drove past my church, I wondered about all the many things I’ve got on my to-do list, and how many will actually get done over fall break.

Morgan Wallen came on shuffle and I was singing along “I got better since you got gone…”

Then, I looked to my left, and there was a police officer sitting with his lights off.

I checked my speedometer.

I was good.

But I eased off the accelerator a tad anyway.

As I passed by him, I suddenly remembered. My headlight.

A few nights before, my mom had noticed that my headlight seemed dimmer. Then the next night, it was burned out.

I hadn’t planned on going to the bowling alley, so I had completely forgotten I would be driving at night.

The police officer pulled out onto the road behind me and I watched my rearview mirror. After a minute, those blue lights started flashing.

I pulled over. I put Morgan on pause. I waited.

He came up to my passenger window and introduced himself and told me why he had pulled me over.

I have a lot of trauma from my wild days about being pulled over, so even though I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, I was still a bit nervous.

I have great admiration for our first responders, especially police officers, and I knew he was just doing his job.

He asked for my driver’s licence, registration, and insurance.

I handed him the first two, then told him I would have to pull my insurance up on my phone.

As he ran my information, I tried to get my Geico app to work.

He came back over and I grumbled something about two-factor authentication. He mentioned how that is supposed to help keep people from stealing our identities. I agreed, but noted it wasn’t overly convenient while getting pulled over. He laughed.

He said I was good to go and I told him to have a good night and stay safe.

…

This morning I woke up and knew I needed to go buy headlights.

The funny thing is, each of my two headlights had respectively gone out since I moved here.

I used to have people that helped me change them. Those people are now in my past.

So when the light went out for the first time, I decided it was time to teach myself.

I bought the light, watched a YouTube video, got home and tried to do it in the dark in my driveway. Epic fail.

I drove back to AutoZone and had someone working help me.

When the other light went out (also my fault because you are supposed to change them in pairs), I repeated the same process, except, I stayed stuck with my head under my hood re-watching that dang YouTube video until I finally got it right.

When I purchased the pair (yes I learned my lesson) of new headlights this morning, I told myself, you can do this. I had watched the YouTube video as soon as I got out of bed, so when I pulled back into my driveway, I knew I could do it.

One after the other.

Unplug the power source.

Pull out the rubber stopper.

Unhinge the clip.

Remove the old light.

Replace with the new light.

Secure the clip.

Replace the rubber stopper.

Plug the power source back into the light.

I repeated the process on the other light and within 5 minutes I was done.

Let there be head light.

See, I wasn’t really frustrated that I got pulled over for having a headlight out. I was worried about repeating this process and failing again at doing it myself. So I had unconsciously avoided buying replacements.

My psyche has been fragile of late and even a small failure like not being able to install my own headlights felt like it was going to push me over the edge again.

Ultimately though, I’ve said it before, and I guess I’ll have to keep saying it to myself:

A lesson will repeat itself until it is learned.

I can change my headlights flawlessly now. I just had to work the steps and meet a very kind police officer along the way.

The question is, what is all this extra light supposed to help me see?

❤