You get this knot in the pit of your stomach when your vehicle starts to make noises it shouldn’t…the anxiety grows when the noises get louder and you know – you just know – it can’t be good. You really start to panic when the noises, now banging and grinding…are clearly identified coming from within the transmission housing…mechanics reading this are beginning to salivate – cha’ching! Shit…and few more expletives…and then what to do? I have some great friends, and luckily a few who know a thing or two about engines and transmissions…me? Well sadly while my buddies in high school were taking shop and automotive mechanic classes I was in the computer lab…so I know next to nothing about combustion engines and the mechanics that make them go…and just as sad, turns out my aptitude for computer programming was only pretty average too…sigh. It’s a pretty fabulous feeling though when you call a couple guys, friends for a long time…but friends you’ve neglected in preference of your new young family…and you ask the favor, “…I got this noise thing, like heavy clicking and grinding when I drive my truck – could you take a look for me?”, and they say ‘Yes’…and even more so that their tone inflects the sentiment of concern and camaraderie that only good friends share. I arrive at the shop where the two of them are working on an old truck restoration – a project of some time now and particular attention to detail…clearly a labour of love and passion…and they immediately stop what they are doing and within seconds they are on the ground under my truck assessing the situation. Within minutes nuts and bolts are falling to the ground…the problem is identified and determined to be immediately correctable…60 minutes later the repair is complete, transmission housing reassembled, muffler reattached…truck good as new, and me amazed and slightly stunned…and incredibly thankful and relieved. Friends, good friends…friends who will step up and help, not because they should or must, but because they can and they want to – are great friends…and I am blessed and lucky enough to have a few.
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Lawrence Lewis
“It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.” – Epicurus
About Lawrence Lewis
I do a number of things professionally...but most of all and the true purpose of what I do through "my work" is to provide for my family, be a good husband and great father, and try to make a difference as a world citizen...I guess it's not much more complicated than that 🙂