In the course of being a guy, even in a harshly “woke” America, there is a body of “basic guy stuff” that an American male needs to be able to do.

So, a month ago I am getting ready to take a road trip. Pre-road trip checklist includes having the tires rotated, the oil changed (Take 5 Oil Change — 25% veterans discount, located next to Chez Zee), fueling up for a pre-dawn departure, loading the beach gear, and checking the lights on the Yukon (great road trip car with 160,000 miles, Bose sound system, leather bucket seats, lots of beach gear room, meat locker air conditioning system front and back, dependable and trustworthy, knows the way from my house to the border of Texas at any point of the compass — damn good road trip car).

So, a lights check reveals a dead headlight (low beam) which propels me to O’Reilly Auto Parts right off Interstate Highway 35 next to Fiesta Market to buy two — not one — low beam replacement lights.

Guy at the counter warns me that I either need to go with the new blue-white brighter lights or the Old School amber/yellow lights. I go Old School because I hate running toward the HID lights. And, more importantly, I am Old School. Why fight it? Part of Old School is replacing both low beam headlights at the same time because an old headlight bulb is not as bright as a new one. Basic guy savvy.

I buy two and change them in the parking lot because I know how to do “basic guy stuff” like changing your headlight bulbs (I admit I did not change my own oil, but they (with the discount) do it for what I would pay to buy the damn oil alone.)

Changing the headlights requires some “basic guy savvy” which is often the intellectual underpinning of knowing how to do basic guy stuff.

While I am double checking my newly installed lights to make sure they work, up comes a black Suburban that has been fairly recently shined up though it has been killing bugs for some miles by the look of the windshield. Looks to be a recent model, but not brand new.

The door opens and out comes a Dallas guy — white shorts, cloth belt with fish on it, light blue polo, clean boat shoes with cute white socklets, $80 haircut, and Ray Bans on his head because it is right at dusk.

“Both of my headlights are out,” sayeth the Dallas guy to me, as if I am the Headlight Fairy. I point him into O’Reilly Auto Parts, while saying, “They’ll fix you up.”

“I don’t have any tools,” he says.

“Your lucky day,” I reply. “It doesn’t take any tools to replace a headlight on a Suburban.”

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