It is normal in today’s day and age for the owner of an automobile to know relatively little about his machine. Carburetor? Who needs one. Fuel-injection valve? Sounds useless. This is a bad sign for society, and for our national security. Fortunately, there is a brave class of Men who still have great respect for the internal combustion engine and the wonderful things it does. These Men are called are auto mechanics.
There are several characteristics necessary if one is to be an auto mechanic. The first is grease – on the hands, smudged across the face, ingrained in the hair. The fact is that being a mechanic is a dirty job, and any kind of effort to avoid or deny this fact negates Mantivity status. The second characteristic is a vocabulary far wider than the average person – including words like gudgeon pin, gasket, and torque. The final characteristic is a complete and utter nonchalance in the face of all circumstances, as unexpected or as infuriating as they may be. Nonchalance is always Manly, but when a forty year old lady screams at you that there is no way it should cost over 1000 dollars to replace the transmission on her Volvo station wagon, it takes something extra not to lower yourself to violence.
The Manitivity score for being an auto-mechanic is a 3.3. The important thing to note about this score is that it applies to a very specific definition of “auto-mechanic” – that is: a person who, regardless of circumstance, would not decline an offer to assist his neigbor with car related issues, and in pursuit of said assistance, would not fail to say “Let’s see what we got here,” as he pops the hood of his neighbor’s vehicle. Note that this does not necessarily mean he is a professional mechanic, merely that he could be, if he were not employed in some other fasion.
October 3, 2009 at 8:12 am
nowadays the people in this trade are called automotive service technicians, since they deal with not just the mechanical side of the vehicle