Nick put my blind spot mirrors in the wrong spot. I think it was our third or fourth time hanging out. We were in the parking lot of the local elementary school. It was the weekend during the pandemic and totally empty. I play frisbee golf, and he plays ultimate frisbee. We had been to a disc golf course already but hadn’t played ultimate, so we went to the field at the school so he could teach me how to catch frisbees. Common sense would say there isn’t much to catching a frisbee, but I kept bruising my fingers and needed help.
My driving tends to make people riding with me nervous and Nick was no exception. I’d bought blind spot mirrors thinking it would help him feel a little more safe. Maybe he would even stop whipping his head around every time I made a lane change. He offered to put them on my mirrors and placed them on the inside lower corner. This did not expand my vision at all, but it was early on in our relationship and I did not want to challenge him.
It was almost a year later when he admitted that they were in the wrong spot, after he put blind spot mirrors on his own car and looked up where you were supposed to put them.
This weekend was a long one so it felt like we had some time to fix this issue by taking off the old ones and putting on new ones.
At the auto store I also bought new mats for my car as I’d worn a hole in my driver’s side mat. I got a paint pen to stop the various rust spots that are popping up on my car from spreading.
I gave Nick my ice scraper to get the old blind spot mirrors off while I fooled with the mats and touching up my car.
The ice scraper is not the right tool to use for blindspot mirrors. He immediately broke my driver’s mirror into three pieces. The blindspot mirror stubbornly stayed in place.
He was overly angry with himself as he prides his ability to know things about cars and take care of them. He went back inside the auto store and unknowingly ordered the wrong replacement mirror to come the next day. (My mirror is heated. I did not know that. My car was also manufactured in Japan, not the US, which means parts are slightly different. I also did not know that.)
The mats and the rust spots were taken care of without any issue at all.
60% of my field of vision remained with that broken mirror. The angle of the blindspot mirror had due to this new crack made its uselessness more pronounced. If Nick was nervous before, now he was unhinged.
He watched three or four videos on how to replace a mirror for my car and consulted a friend. We went back to the auto parts store, got the wrong mirror, and went back to my car. Nick had razor scrapers now, and was able to remove the blindspot mirror from the passenger side effortlessly. He then removed the broken mirror and realized it was heated. While he bent over a trash can with the mirror to remove all the glass, I noted that none of the prongs from the new mirror lined up with the holder.
“Ok Shawna. Shawna, ok. Ok, Shawna,” Nick replied half jokingly and half exasperatedly when I told him the new mirror was not going to fit.
We brought the broken up mirror and the new mirror to the parts guy and showed how the backing was not alike. He agreed, researched on his computer which part was the right one while giving us a treatise on his low paying job being essential while dealership service centers were not essential. His dingy mouse caused the cursor to wildly flick across the screen as he apologized for his railings against our classist society. We nodded, sympathetic. I can’t afford dealership prices. I understand workers who can’t afford those prices nor take time off work to go when the dealership is open. We are low-wage earners together having to work and take care of mirrors at times we don’t want to.
The correct mirror won’t be here for weeks. Nick got a plastic mirror to cut to size and traced the mirror on the wrong side. He then had to re-cut it to actually fit the old mirror backing.
I cleaned out my console for the first time in years, throwing away a lot of junk, moving the pens to a more accessible place, finding the title to my trailer, and leaving the seashells in the bottom of the console. I cleaned my glovebox and noted that every surface of my car was stained with something that I should probably remove and would be glad to if Nick took more time. But he was finished, and stuck on the new plastic mirror and had me test it.
I couldn’t see anything. The plastic was warped, and it was like looking into a reflecting pool. My field of vision was down to zero. Sensing that he was about to lose it over this mirror business, I asked him if I could give it a try. I thought maybe his mirror was a flat layer I could stick yet another plastic mirror on.
Back inside the store I could not find the plastic mirror. I found a glass mirror for a Toyota Camry and while I knew it was smaller than my mirror, it would bring my field of vision to to 80%. When I brought it out Nick said he’d been thinking the same thing, that another layer of plastic wouldn’t work and we should just do a smaller glass.
We removed the plastic mirror, and I stuck on the new glass mirror on the dusty chassis of the old mirror. It was decent. We drove home.
That night we took my car to go to dinner. I carefully adjusted my new mirror to ensure it correctly reflected what I needed to see. We rumbled to the next light, and when I checked the mirror it showed me the tops of the trees nearby. I pushed the buttons to start the little motor that moved the mirror chassis to aim it lower, and the whole mirror slipped. I gasped and rolled my window down to grab it before it fell to the ground. The sticker on the back of the mirror was covered in dust. I drove to dinner without the mirror, which made Nick retreat to a deep inner recess where it was probably safe for him to lose his mind.
He asked if I wanted to restick the mirror tonight or tomorrow morning before we went to work. “You mean when I’m tired, it’s freezing dark and there is frost covering everything?” I replied incredously.
In his house, he procured a cleaning wipe and double sided tape, and gratefully accepted my offer for him to stay inside while I completed this step of the mirror journey. I cleaned the mirror backing, dried it, and then could not get the mirror to stick with the uneven grooves of the backing. Finally, the mirror stayed when it was pushed on diagonally. I should have put the tape on the backing instead of the mirror first.
This morning there was no frost and the mirror stayed put. I’ll have a mirror update on January 27.
All of this could have been avoided if I disagreed with Nick and put the mirrors where I thought they should go. When have you given up being right to preserve a relationship Gabby?
