Last night something happened to me that only reinforces my conviction that a needle and thread are among the most important tools in the universe. Second only to scissors, and a good pair of pliers, and safety pins, my needle and thread, which I always have with me, saved the day. Because so much was going on, I didn’t want to add to the chaos by trying to take pictures, so this post will be as descriptive as I can make it. It is relevant, I promise.

Backstory:

Last night was Hectic. We had relatives over for dinner. Not your aunt and cousins to run around and have a barbecue relatives, but the kind you dress up for and serve a really nice dinner, and when things go wrong they can only go the worst kind of wrong. So my parents were on edge. P and I had dentists appointments in the middle of the suburbs. I had to drive all the way out there, so he and I were both on edge. (No cavities though)

Driving back, we noticed a scraping sound on the rear drivers side tire. We didn’t see anything immediately wrong with it, but the brakes were exhibiting symptoms which pointed to us needing really expensive new breaks last time they happened. So we took the car into the repair shop. And got it back later in the evening, after the whole relatives shebang was over. So 10:00 comes around, and P and Dad are in the garage working on the car, because they think they can figure out what’s wrong with it.

P comes bursting into my room around 11, “We need every pair of little pliers you have” I don’t even have time to explain which ones are best for gripping, and that the pair of round-nose I have won’t help him in the least. He comes back. “We need a needle and thread.” So I grab them and a pair of scissors, and head down to see how exactly they plan to fix a car with a needle and thread.

A spring which was threaded onto a wire pin with some washers and other things in this really difficult to access (without completely dismantling the car and getting in way over our heads at midnight) place in the parking break mechanism had come loose. It sprang off and they needed to get it back on, which meant compressing this fairly heavy duty spring and using my chain-nose pliers to get it through a little hole back onto the pin.

Hence the needle and thread. I wrapped the thread around the spring in several places about 20x each and tied it off. They put it back in, with my pliers. I went to bed because it was like 12:30 at that point, with P’s promise that my chain-nose pliers will be intact in the morning, and his complaints that the round nose pliers didn’t work. (I could have told him that)

According to P, he and Dad were up until about 2:30 working on it. Poor Dad had to work today too! But they got the thing back together. Now it’s back to the repair shop with the car, because Dad managed to diagnose the problem thanks to the needle and thread, and my pliers, which the mechanics didn’t manage to do, and now they know what the problem is, the professionals will fix it. We hope.

But the needle and thread saved the day. We used them to fix a car. We’re just that cool.

PLEASE, don’t try it at home. Dad’s a mechanical engineer, and P worked a summer at the repair shop. So they knew what they were doing. I just wrangled the thread.