Crank Windows
Remember Andy Rooney?
He was the curmudgeon with the eyebrows on 60 Minutes who always had a complaint he wanted to register with society at the end of the show. We always watched 60 Minutes after Giants games on Sundays when I was a kid because my mom and dad wanted to hear what Andy Rooney had to say.
I only realized what a genius Andy Rooney was in the late ‘90s, when I was in high school and had inherited my parents’ 1985 Oldsmobile – the first car I got to drive by myself after getting my license. I promptly crashed that car (not my fault, but also, insurance underwriters are not wrong), but even before I crashed it the power windows stopped working.
Which is where Andy Rooney comes in.
Because being a 17-year-old with a car whose power windows don’t work sounds like a first world problem until you understand that some kids – not me, Mom! – who were cooler than me smoked cigarettes. And smoking cigarettes in a car where the windows don’t go down is a problem. Yes, smoking cigarettes is also a problem, but inconveniencing kids who are cooler than you is definitely a problem.
So I checked what it would cost to get the power windows fixed and the estimate was $400. That was roughly what I made in a week landscaping.
In other words, $400 was a big problem back then. And it made me wonder why I couldn’t just have crank windows. Because why risk an expensive repair to save yourself three tiny arm circles? I think that could have been the basis for a very compelling Andy Rooney monologue.
After the Oldsmobile got totaled out, I used a mix of the insurance proceeds and my landscaping money to buy a Volvo wagon with crank windows since now I knew better. My learning was that there’s a lot of downside in exponentially increasing cost and complexity only to get a marginally better outcome. This is why power windows are stupid.
Of course, I also love my seat warmers. Where’s Andy Rooney when we need him?
– Tim
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