Saturday morning, we had our first decent rain of spring (I live in a desert, y'all, it's a big deal). I had things to do in town, so me and the kids put on jackets and piled into the van (it was actually less like piling in and more like coercing them to stop jumping in puddles so we could go already).
At first, the rain was light enough that I only needed to turn on the windshield wipers every couple of minutes, so I would just push the lever up when I couldn't see anymore. But a few miles down the road, it was pouring, so I switched the wipers on high.
Except nothing was happening.
I had turned on the rear window wiper, which was utterly useless as far as helping me see where I was hurtling at 65mph to.
I slowed down, glanced at the wiper controls, and panicked because I suddenly had NO IDEA how to work the windshield wipers. While I tried to remember, I had to keep pushing the lever up to clear the windshield. I started talking out loud to myself...
"How does someone who's been driving over a decade just FORGET how windshield wipers work? What other vehicle-opperating knowledge has fallen out of my head? Do I know how to use the turn signals? (I checked) Oh, that's a relief. Do I remember how to fill the tank? (I racked my brain) Yes. How weird is this?! I'm completely drawing a blank!"
In the back seat, my son was chanting "Wipe...wipe...wipe" every time I pushed the lever, and as the rain was coming down so hard, this was just about every 1.003 seconds.
We drove over ten miles this way. Ten. Miles.
And then, poof! Just like that, I remembered how to turn on the windshield wipers.
I don't know why these things happen to me. I don't know why I didn't just pull over and take a second to chill and figure it out *facepalm*