WD-40 and Classical Music

I walked into my room to hear my room mate's profession of his love for me.

But first there was the issue of the squeaky door. The door to our room would squeak really really badly. You could open it however you liked, and it would squeak. You could try to sneak past the squeak by opening the door very slowly, but the squeak would never fail to appear as a long, low menacing creak. Or you could try to outrun the squeak by opening the door really really fast, but there the squeak would be, sharp and quick.

It was impossible. Not even talking to it would help. "I really need to you be quiet, it's 3 in the morning and my room mate is sleeping." The squeak would regard such pleas with indifference matched only by Indiana Jones when he was under the influence of that really evil heart-burning guy in the Temple of Doom.

But there are other things to worry about in life, too! Take, for instance, one of my headlights burning out. That is always a pain because the engine compartment of my car is packed. I mean jampacked. That little engine bay was made to hold a humble 4 cylinder, not the beastly V6 that resides in there now. So there is a battery jammed right up behind the headlight, making it nearly impossible to fit your hand in there to unscrew the coupling ring and unclip the headlight. I managed to get that done somehow, anyway.

While at Wal-Mart getting a new headlamp, I decided I may as well get some WD-40 as well. That door of mine was just about to put me over the edge. I grabbed a can of the wondrous water displacer (attempt number 40) and made towards the checkout line.

I scanned the WD-40 in the self-checkout lane. An alarm starts beeping and the screen flashed, "RESTRICTED ITEM!" This put me in a state of complete and utter dismay. I checked the little station where an employee is supposed to attend to these matters. No one was manning the station! I was completely forsook.

I beckon a Wal-Martian from the line next to me to help me out. She scans a little magical card fastened to her wrist and asks to see some ID. It was my first time being carded! Yes!

I then checked out the headlight and made my merry way to the parking lot. I pop the hood to put in the new headlamp. I thought it was funny how people give me strange looks and double takes when you have your hood propped open in a parking lot, but no one even offers to help. They couldn't have known it was only a burned out headlight. It could have been something hugely gigantic, like a marmot in the valvetrain. I really must have looked like I had the situation under control for no one to say anything to me.

Some time passes. Night falls. I go to bed and awake for classes. After the OLS recitation, I bust out the WD-40 and spray the hinges. Then I head out to my thuganomics, er, economics recitation. After an easy quiz in there, I head back to my room.

There my room mate stood as I opened the door. "I love you," he said. I gave him the kind of look you might expect me to give him, and he said, "You fixed the door!"

Whew. That was a close one.

So I head off to take a shower when I notice the strangest thing. There is classical music playing! Someone had set a chair up behind the trash can, and there was a little boombox sitting on there, blasting away with some classical music. It was really nice to be showering and to hear something other than Lil Jon being blasted five rooms down. As I got out of the shower, there was a small group discussing amongst themselves how the radio got there.

"I just wanna know where the chair came from!"

I don't know why they wanted to know. It didn't look like a very comfortable chair. It looked less comfortable than our dorm chairs.

Anyway, I realized why the WD-40 is a restricted item.





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