I remember when I was a teenager, or maybe 20, tinting my own car windows. It was a four-cylinder Subaru hatchback and my father and grandfather had convinced me when I bought it that a four -cylinder engine couldn't support an air conditioner because the air conditioner would cause the engine to burn up.
So I drove around central Florida in a hatchback with no air conditioning. Every time I drove to work I prayed for green lights.
One summer I really wanted to have tinted windows but I really didn't want to pay somebody to do it because that was expensive. I saw in the Sears catalog where I could order window tinting. The write-up made it seem like it was a pretty easy process even though I had no idea what I was doing. I ordered the window tinting and anxiously waited.
When it came in I backed the car into the driveway of my mom and dad's house. I spread everything out on the dirty garage floor because I didn't think that I needed to sweep in order to do this. There were no surfaces to lay the window tinting on to work with it.
And so I of course laid it on the floor of the dirty garage. And while I was going back and forth to the directions and the window tinting and cleaning my car windows, getting them ready, once I peeled the window tinting backing off of the sheet that was going to go in my back window, I had to go over and get something off of the freezer that was in the garage.
And I didn't think about it, I just kind of stepped over the window film and my foot sprinkled granules of sand all over the sticky side of the window tinting. I put it in the window and went to smooth all the bubbles out and could not smooth them out very well because of the sand.
There was no extra window tinting to use to do it again and so I ran with it and just put it in with the sand and the bubbles. The side windows I did better on and didn't get any sand in them and I got most of the bubbles out of them.
In Florida you could do the front windows so I did the front windows too and that turned out okay. But I had to ride around with the windows up and it was hot and that was a rough few days while I waited for the window tinting to dry.
But I did it! I was successful in tinting my own windows. I looked through bubbles every time I looked in the rear view mirror and most of the time I'd be upset with myself. But sometimes I actually laughed about it and just kind of shook my head.
Even today after so many years I'll go to do something and I'll think, "Hmm I need to think through this one more time so I don't mess it up like I did that window tinting." And by mess it up I mean make it not look as cool as it could have.
It worked and it looked awesome to me. I like bubbles :-)
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