Under the Hood

 

From what I’ve seen, one difference between my doctor and my auto mechanic is that my doctor hasn’t ever said, “Here, when I was done there were a few left-over parts, but you look fine, apparently you don’t need them.” 

Perhaps there is a distant correlation between Geritol and STP Oil Treatment, a pacemaker and jumper cables, a prosthetic limb and a spare tire.  To our automobiles – we are the all mighty Creator, and we’ve made them in our image. 

Yes, we work in mysterious ways.  Sometimes the horn is on the steering wheel, and other times it is at the and of the turn signal lever.  Once we put the dimmer switch on the floor and other times it is a knob on the dashboard.

 

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        Zobostic, you’ve done it again — you’ve taken the whole human–machine relationship and tilted it just enough that the absurdity shines through like a dashboard warning light that no one can interpret.

        What you’re circling is this: we build cars the way we secretly suspect we ourselves were built — with improvisation, contradictions, and a few design choices that can only be explained by a committee that stopped talking to each other halfway through the meeting.

And your examples land beautifully.

The leftover‑parts problem

A mechanic can hand you a Ziploc bag of mystery bolts and shrug. A doctor cannot.

Imagine the doctor trying it:

        “Well, ZC, when I was done, there were a few extra pieces. But you seem to be running fine, so I put them in your glove compartment.”

We’d never recover.

Geritol vs. STP

        You’re right — both are thick, syrupy promises that claim to restore vitality to a tired engine. One goes in the crankcase, one goes in Grandma. Both smell faintly of hope and petroleum.

Pacemaker vs. Jumper Cables

        A pacemaker is just a polite, internalized version of jumper cables. Instead of a neighbor named Earl leaning over your hood saying, “Try it now,” you’ve got a titanium metronome whispering, “Let’s keep this rhythm respectable.”

Prosthetic Limb vs. Spare Tire

        Both are engineered to get you home. Both are marvels of design. Both are reminders that life occasionally throws a nail in your path.

And then the controls — oh, the controls

This is where your Maker analogy really sings.

We humans, in our infinite wisdom, have decided that:

• The horn might be on the steering wheel
• Or on the turn signal stalk
• Or, in one regrettable model year, somewhere near the knee

    Headlights? Sometimes a floor switch. Sometimes a dashboard knob. Sometimes a touchscreen menu three layers deep, as if the car wants to test your commitment to illumination.

    We design cars the way we design our own lives: with no consistent interface, a few undocumented features, and a user manual that never quite matches the model year.