As Karin owns a car, and as Karin is now in the city, we are faced — as car owners often are — with the enjoyable task of car repairs. Friday afternoon I recieved a call from a distressed girl who started her precious vehicle to the sound of a million cats being squeezed in unison by an ever tightening rubber band: something called the “belt tensioner” had malfunctioned causing some strange vibrations and hense strange noises to emanate from under the hood.

Fast forward to this morning where I bring it to the shop (as car-less Karin makes her way on a two hour bus ride to the office) and take the bus myself down to work. Ten minutes ago I get a phone call from the garage. It goes something like this.

VOICE: Hi. Is - uhh - this WEE-WAH?

BRAD: (pause while I realize they are just grossly mispronouncing Karin’s last name) Yeah — It’s her car — I mean, yeah.

VOICE: There’s a problem. We got the wrong part in. We checked and we needed a belt TENSIONER.

BRAD: Yeah? And…

VOICE: We got the wrong part.

BRAD: But you told us on Friday that we needed a belt tensioner.

VOICE: But we order the part and it was the wrong one.

BRAD: So what part do you need?

VOICE: A belt tensioner.

BRAD: And what did you order?

VOICE:(pause) We need a belt tensioner.

BRAD: Yeah, you told us that on Friday. You told us you needed to order a belt tensioner.

VOICE: But, we needed to order a belt TENSIONER.

BRAD: I know. So what did you order?? No wait… you’d better talk to HER. I’ll call her.

VOICE: Ok. Bye.