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Miss It When It's Gone

I know enough about my car to take care of minor repairs with it: I can change tires, change windshield wipers, swap out headlights or fuses, and swap out the suspension. I still don't know enough to take care of anything major, though, so I don't try. When it comes to things like the transmission or the electrical system as a whole, I take it to the professionals. I kinda sorta need those to run well, and I'd rather not learn the hard way that I made a mistake when working on one of those systems.

So, when the taillight indicator on the dashboard came on, I started by checking it wasn't one of the little things I could fix. After all, if it was just a blown out bulb, I could fix that myself. First, though, I needed to figure out which light was acting up, so I could investigate further. There, however, was the rub. I couldn't tell which light was problematic. My brake lights all turned on, the turn signals blinked just fine, and the reverse lights turned on as expected. In short, everything looked like it worked, as far as I could tell. I even enlisted my dad at one point to verify that I wasn't seeing things. He told me the same thing: all the lights were fine.

Well, I didn't have time to bring the car in to the shop, and as far as I could tell, my car was safe to drive. The strangest part of it all was that the indicator light would only turn on when I turned on my headlights. I couldn't think of why this might be, but the car seemed to be fully operational minus one dashboard indicator. So, I just ignored the indicator light on the dashboard when I turned on my headlights. I did make sure my head lights and tail lights weren't suddenly going out on me, but I got very used to seeing that orange indicator light. It became more of a minor annoyance than anything else, but it was something to which I had to pay attention.

And then, suddenly, one day when I was driving home, it was gone. I was a little tired from a long day at work, so I almost didn't notice it at first. However, as I was driving along, I suddenly realized that the indicator light wasn't on. I did a double-take, and made sure that my headlights were on, and I made sure to give myself extra room when I was braking or merging lanes. Still, I could see in front of me just fine, and the people behind me didn't seem to think that I was causing any problems. I made it home without a hitch, and I double checked to make sure that I didn't have any bigger problems now. After giving the car the once-over, I was satisfied that all the lights were working as expected.

However, that was the problem. In that short time, I'd manage to get used to that light on my dashboard. When my headlights were on, the indicator light was on. Or, to put it another way, I could tell my headlights were on because that indicator light was on. Do you know what happens when you become accustomed to this correlation? You get nervous when it's no longer true. If I was driving down the street at dusk when I didn't absolutely need my headlights but I wanted to be cautious, I second-guessed that the lights were on because that stupid indicator light wasn't on. It wasn't dark enough for me to easily tell from a visual inspection, and I'd gotten used to the dashboard being able to tell me. I remember having a few very confused seconds the first couple of times this happened.

I hate to say it, but I miss that indicator light just a little bit. It acted a little crazy, but I knew what kind of crazy to expect. I'm reminded of a line from a Gotye song: "you can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness." I'm sure it'll fade over time as I get used to the new status quo, too, but I can't help but laugh at myself. Stupid light.
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