How administering a COVID/Covid test is like finding antifreeze’s freezing point in 1977

A Column by John Estridge

My Long Suffering Wife Ruth asked me to give her a second blanket the other night as we were sitting and watching a baseball game on TV.

Ruth wouldn’t be cold if she sat in a freezer for 30 minutes.

But, since I don’t like talking to divorce attorneys, I did as I was told. About 10 minutes later, Ruth went upstairs to bed and stayed there for a few days. Originally, we diagnosed it as the proverbial 24-hour bug. However, after 72 hours, I talked her into taking a COVID test.

A question here: Is it still spelled COVID or has it changed to Covid? There are so many things about COVID/Covid, that I am confused about, my head was spinning as Ruth and I were trying to figure out the current protocol if indeed she had the disease, condition, virus, whatever it is.

Like we are dogs, we always tell people – when the conversation goes in that direction – that we’ve had all our shots. However, I don’t think we have taken our monkey pox vaccine yet. And I really don’t know if having all of one’s shots really matters.

Anyway, a daughter had a couple tests and brought one over. She gingerly handed it to me as she stood out in the “safety” of the porch.

It was in a 15-minute period when Ruth was upright and downstairs, so I plunged right in, so to speak.

I kind of hate to admit this, but it took me more than a little time just to find the instructions. There was information about the box. There was information on who wrote the information about the box. There was information about COVID/Covid. There was probably information about the current shortage of baby formula. And I read all that before I found the instructions. However, the first book of instructions I found was in Spanish. I know hablar Espanol, gracias and Viva Las Vegas. With a cursory look through those instructions, I could not find any of those words.

So, a little bit farther inside of what I came to think of as a magical box because it held so much printed material in such a small space, I found English directions, sort of. It was one of those like you get with furniture where there are a lot of sketch-like things, and not a lot of readable words.

Then, I could not open the packages of the different things one needs to do the test, like small vials with some sort of fluid in them. A long Q-tip and what was called a test strip. Ruth was beyond complaining about my ineptitude, as sick as she was, she still knew it would do no good to complain about me not being able to do simple things – well, anything — and she dutifully opened every package for me.

I then did all the steps and did not see a pink line on the test strip. Some English words — I tried to translate into Spanish — on the instructions said to look closely because the pink line can be faint. I am old and there is never enough light, but I carefully carried the test strip over so I was directly under the light and still could not see a pink line, even a faint, pink line.

Did Ruth have COVID/Covid? Who knows? The test said no.

However, the entire time I was doing Ruth and my exercise in futility, I was thinking about the Fall of 1977.

There may be a total of eight or nine people reading this. Way less will remember the winters of 77 through 79.

People did not talk about Global Warming back then. Instead, there was talk, serious talk, of Ice Age, and I am not talking about the animated movie.

 In the Fall of 1977, my 20-year-old, long-haired, hippie-like self was working for let’s call it Bob’s Auto Service in Richmond. The person who owned it, and we are calling him Bob, was a gruff Korean War Vet. He was really a nice guy, but he was really, really blunt and was one of the best cussers I have ever met.

Bob did not like to show people how to do things once, let alone more than once, and he hired me.

I still scratch my bald head over that.

Bob and I had a conversation about a month and a half into my sojourn there. He told me I was a nice person; he could trust me with money; and I showed up to work every day on time. However, read those things with more expletives than English words in those sentences.

He told me those, again read many more expletives than normal words, were characteristics people of my generation did not have in abundance. However, he said I was rather stupid – think of a lot of cuss words before the word stupid. I could not argue with anything he said that day. However, although I was and am stupid, he continued to employ me because of those first three characteristics.

What I became good at was changing tires. Another employee – he was not good at coming to work at all let alone on time and I wouldn’t have trusted him with a quarter — there showed me about 12 times how to take a tire off the wheel and put it back on the wheel before I could get a grasp on the different steps it took. I think there might have been three. But once I had that down, I was good to go and could change and patch tires all day long. I could balance tires, somewhat, but I want to apologize to anyone whose car was out-of-alignment after I attempted to do that function.

Again, I didn’t have a clue

Unfortunately for Bob, me and his customers, I had to do more than change and patch tires.

I could pump gas. We still did that then, but I was not too good with a squeegee, and I am still terrible with a squeegee. After I get done washing the windshield of my car now, I feel I need to take it to a car wash just to be able to see unobstructed through the windshield again.

However, the thing that I really want to apologize for is checking the antifreeze’s freezing point.

Bob gave me a tube with some balls in it. I was to extract some radiator fluid and then see if the balls floated. I cannot remember if the number of balls floating was the key or something like that. But, I could never remember how to hold it once the liquid was in there.

Was I supposed to hold it vertically, with the top up? Or vertically with the top down? Or horizontally? And was I supposed keep it still, or shake it first, or shake it more than just first?

I could not remember those things because, as I said Bob did not like to show people how to do it even once. I made him, but he did it in about one-fifth of a second. I was doing things to my brain as I drove to work back then, that made me think even slower than I did and do naturally.

So, I had no clue what Bob had said other than there were a lot of expletives like normal. And there was no way in heck I was going to ask Bob to show me again.

Thus, I extracted fluid, hid behind the raised hood, looked forlornly at my instrument or gauge or whatever it was and then told the driver, his or her antifreeze was fine.

For the majority who were not alive during the ensuing winter, it stayed between zero and 100 below zero from Thanksgiving until July 4. In January 1978, the world stopped for everyone in the area when THE BLIZZARD hit.

I am sure there were blocks that cracked and poor people became poorer because of some idiotic idiot who was afraid to ask questions of his cursing, scary boss.

And I imagine some if not all of them went back to Bob’s to raise a little … cane.

But I was not there. I had been hired by D&M in Richmond, and I have already apologized to people who bought Sears dishwashers during the time I worked there. But I will apologize again if that helps.

I would wake Ruth up now and apologize to her, but I am afraid with her present condition, whatever that is, high blood pressure would not be advantageous.