Fixing a Radio

Beads of sweat glisten on my forehead. My hands tremble from the weight. My mind wanders. No. Refocus. You need to refocus. Hours upon hours of labor all culminate here. My team waits outside. I hand this weight over to my assistant, reposition myself, and work to tuck away this jungle of wires. Untangled and organized, they're still not fitting. Reorganize. Re-tangle. I did it, it fits. Okay now, just inch it in. Gently. Everything seems to have worked; we've labored, sweated, and hurt, and it's done. But does it work? I summon up all my courage, and reach for the switch that says ON.

Rewind three months. Picture the beautiful town of New City, where we've solved hunger and cured cancer, if only for our elite population. Kids don't drive cars, kids drive Audis, BMW's, Benz's. It doesn't matter as long as it is German and new and nice. I was enroute to being one of the many, and then my parents decided to be reasonable. We had an extra car, a Honda Pilot, and that's for me. Needless to say, in my insolence and ingratitude, I was disappointed.

Jump forward two months. It's the middle of the summer and I love my car. It's big and it does everything I could ever want it to do. Everything that is, except for play my tunes! How do I solve this problem? I buy an aftermarket audio system of course!

Also it's important to state that by this point, I'm striving to be as completely financially independent as possible, and by virtue of my paid internship I'm more or less successful. Nonetheless, this is a project of tremendous expense, expense which would paralyze me, and render me unable of the casual outings and the mini-vacations I valued so much..

For the next month, I limited my spending solely to gas. Every penny I made, every dollar I earned went towards the project. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, I had saved enough for my the audio system. I ordered it. I waited.

During this wait, I came to the conclusion that I needed to assemble a team, and through meticulous screening, I narrowed the search down to two (the only two willing to help). Everything fell in place, and we set aside a Sunday to do the job.

That day, we convened at seven to begin work. We begin by taking apart the car. Take those four screws out, then pull off the plastic dash, unplug the wires and you're halfway done. An hour later we've moved on to the the side panels; what's supposed to be a straightforward task becomes the filming of Apocalypse Now. Midway through stripping the left, front door, my screw driver slips, impaling my first assistant. My experiences volunteering at an ambulance corp. (helping trauma victims), immediately came into effect, and I got a Band-aid for my friend.

For a time being, things go smoothly. We installed the speakers, ran the wires to the front, and reassembled the side panels. Then came soldering. Some might assume