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During one of our visits to Saint Augustine, my family visited Ponce de Leon's archaeological park and descended into a cool coquina chamber to sip from the spring of eternal hope. The mythical fountain of youth. While some of the wonder was sapped away as it was served from mini-Dixie bathroom cups rather than the impressive array of goblets featured in the knight's anteroom from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," I was, nonetheless, transformed.

Inspired by this life-changing experience, my husband has been attempting to apply the same principles to our faithful fourteen-year-old Ford Ranger. Often one tire rotation away from total life-support, Ranger gets revived thanks to Brad's constant care and vigilance. On an 8-mile roundtrip-to-work exercise regimen, Ranger is slowly easing into retirement.  I affectionately joke, outside of Brad's hearing, that I often feel like Wonder Woman piloting her invisible plane as the rust eats away my truck's exterior.

Lately, Ranger's exhaust system could drown out a Boeing 747. Because Brad has been spending more time laying underneath the truck than on the couch watching reality tv with his family, I decided to intervene. "Is there anything I can do to help," I asked with complete insincerity.  Without warning, he handed me some metal tube thingamabobs and asked me to exchange them at the auto parts store. Oh no, this never ends well. I listened intently to his instructions about boring clamps and something called a reducer. He rattled off a bunch of numbers and tossed in some math-related terms such as "diameter." I knew I was in way over my head on this one so I grabbed a postie-note and jotted down the information as well as a helpful diagram of the tube, labeling the 2 inch rounded end and then the 2 1/2 inch rounded end. Savannah graciously consented to accompany me after I reminded her of her rent-free existence but she put her foot down as we prepared to enter the establishment. "Leave the postie-note in the car," she said. "Why?" I wondered, knowing that there was no way I'd walk out of that store with anything even remotely

resembling Brad's description without it. "Because your diagram looks like a penis," Savannah said bluntly. I looked at my handiwork in amazement. Why hadn't I seen it before? It was like one of those Magic Eye illusion posters, only in this case, it wasn't a magic "eye." Point taken. We left our pornographic postie-note in the vehicle.

With parts in hand (hee hee), we proudly presented Brad with his requested items. He inspected them like he was looking for flaws in a department store diamond. He sighed with unsurprised resignation. "It's the wrong one." What?!?! "No, look," I corrected, "2 inch and 2 1/2 inch. It says it right there." "It says 2 inch ID and 2 1/2 OD. I had you write on your postie-note ID for inner diameter." Dagnabit! As always, size definitely matters but, until that moment, I had no idea what an important role diameter played too!