Of License Plates and Men

After living in Minnesota for almost 5 years, I finally decided to change over my driver's lisence and car. I am a student you see, and as such I am entitled to pick either my home state (making me an ALIEN of Minnesota) or my residential state (making me an ALIENATOR of Iowa). When my license expired recently, I decided it was time to make the switch.

Unfortunately, making the switch officially means pulling my Iowa license plates off my car and replacing them with Minnesota plates. I knew this would be difficult, since the plates were origially put on in 1989 and have since rusted into fusion with the car and petrified themselves forever. To make things worse, uncountable accidents have significantly altered the shape of the plates and direction the bolts go. I put my manly husband on the job with his manly Toolbox of Mysteries and he got to work. The rear plate came off surprisingly easily and was quickly replaced with a sigh of relief. The front plate, which wasn't even required in Iowa but is in Minnesota, braced itself against us and eventually broke our Mystery Tool #1, to my shock and horror (wow my husband is burly! I swooned). As our tools and egos lied in ruin and defeat, the car laughed in victory, and the bolts remained as stuck as ever in their weird crooked rusted holes in the bumper. We were so weak from the effort we could hardly drag ourselves up the stairs to call for backup in the safety of our apartment.

The backup was an ex-football playing bouncer friend Super-P, who is now a carpenter and has a carpenter's belt full of extremely impressive tools and knowledge (it turns out it was the "ratchet" that broke - wow). He and my husband grunted together for a few minutes (my husband's grunts translated to "you have an awesome toolbelt and wicked sweet set of tools" and Super-P's grunts translated to "thanks... I think"). then Super-P got to work on the car. There was some growling and spitting, some mud-slinging and cussing, some rolling and punching, but eventually Super-P won, impressing the crowd and causing much applause.

The new Minnesota plate had to be custom-bent and only one of the two bolts could be put back in the original bolt-holes, but it'll do, and I am eternally grateful to my husband and Super-P, who have the testosterone and tools to get the job done. Nice job boys!