Change the oil

The previous story got me to thinking about the feeling you get when Dad thought you were good enough to take a job over and then the feeling you have after the honeymoon period is over.

As I mentioned previously, I was usually the one that helped dad change the oil in his truck. Well the help eventually meant I got to take over. The first time he told me to just go and change it, which probably was after 4 years of helping was pretty exciting and scary too. I know the first few times he helped me get the truck up on the ramps and then let me take it over from there. I didn’t care, it was fun. I had always got to do the grunt work and now I got to do what I saw as the fun stuff, you know, like taking the plug and letting the oil drain out. I know, exciting stuff.

Man, I thought, he trusts me enough to change his oil in his truck and obviously does not think I will screw it up. Obviously if someone messes up on changing the oil, it could spell disaster on the road. This exciting feeling soon wore off. When you are on the hook for something whether you like or not, it starts to suck. Since dad probably put well over a 1000 miles on his truck a week, it meant I was changing the oil every 2-3 weeks. I would be feeding steers or something and he would let me know it was time to change the oil. So now I had something else that would keep me away from doing what I wanted to do and I did not even get paid for it. Of course it all worked out in the end, I think my dad more than made up for all of those oil changes over the years. And at the end of the day, if I need to, I can still change my own damn oil.

Shawn