Perspective Draft: the tragic death of the windshield wiper

 

1^st person:

Something that I’ve had a lot of trouble with in the past is my car deciding, wherever I may be, that it no longer wants to be alive. This, for many reasons, can be a problem. On a very blustering day sometime in the winter of 2022, I decided that I needed to change my wipers. They no longer wept—weeped? No, that’s me. Regardless. They truly did not wipe the water off my windshield and they squeaked in such a way that made me crave death (figuratively, of course). My revelation came while I was driving down the high way and noticed that because of the storm, I couldn’t see more than 5 feet in front of me.

Being the highly intelligent person I am, I drove to Autozone, googled what wipers I needed for my car: a very luxurious [quirky] 2010 VW Tiguan Base model. Sadly the wipers are expensive. Not sadly, the butch lesbian that rings me up at the register doesn’t hound me when I walk in like the old guy that works there does. She understands me. This comforts me. What doesn’t comfort me is standing in the parking lot of Autozone off the highway trying to change my wipers in the middle of a rain storm. No, people do not avoid me. They actually keep parking right next to me despite running back and forth like a mad man, desperately trying to pop together the pieces that came in the long plastic sheath. My girlfriend is sitting in the passenger seat trying to help me but I am overcome with anguish. Why the fuck are these wipers so hard to get off.

I finally wrench one free. It takes a chunk of my nail, flaccid and vulnerable from essentially taking a parking lot shower for 35 minutes, but I don’t even fucking care. Take that. I shove the wiper on and before the magic that allowed me to snatch it off recedes into the ether or is washed away by the thunderous rain.

The disgusting old one will be going in the trash, I think, I’ll just do it when I get home….probably.

 

 

Omniscient/different perspective:

What my old wiper blade thinks:

This day started as any other. I drudged on, my prone frame nodding back and forth in the rain but not a thing changed. We have become too weak. I welcome the flood. I lay still along the bottom lip of the glass. My purpose has been fulfilled, and it is my time. I am so tired of this. Back and forth, every day. Wrenched upwards when it snows, used even on sunny days to clean off the glass I so often lay upon. Once, my brother and I were young, strong, even. We had agility like no other. But not anymore. I’ve grown tired of this life, and I’ve come to terms with it.

I see a familiar parking lot, one traveled to many times before. The dollar store stands vacant, and the Indian market sign glows it’s welcome as the car comes to a halt at the store next in line: AutoZone. My home, all those years ago. I remember my time there bittersweetly. I was surrounded by my family and friends. At the same time, it was lonely somehow. I was unfulfilled, swaying idly in my plastic tomb awaiting the hands of a machinist to lift me from perdition and set me to work fulfilling my life’s purpose: to cut through snow, dirt, hail, and rain. To protect my driver from a fate worse than death; driving blind.

The end is nigh, I feel the cold hands of death upon my back. Apparently, death did not google how to do this before attempting to free me. Now that I think about it, it’s a little ironic isn’t it? My last day on earth spent failing at the job I’d been made for. For what? Only to be prodded and yanked and bent into unpleasant shapes by some (uncharacteristically un-handy) lesbian in the parking lot shared by AutoZone and the dollar store.  And then, the click. It comes after tens of minutes of a struggle, but I feel myself go free. I am slipping away, floating higher and higher. I close my wiper-blade eyes and feel myself thrown into a new environment—not dead? No, not dead…Surrounded by random trash, but startlingly alive, and moving. I’ve come to realize over time that this is the inside of the car. Peculiar. One day, maybe soon, I will be free from this. But for now, I lay forgotten under the back seat, collecting dust and listening to the same ten songs over and over again...

 

 

Fin.