LIGHT ON LIFE

MARCH 3, 2026 – Yesterday my iPhone went on the fritz for the second time in four days. All outgoing calls were a “fail,” and all incoming calls went straight to voicemail. On the first “fail,” I searched for online solutions and found one that worked: “Turn on airplane mode [sic] for 30 seconds, then turn it off and retry calling.” On the second occasion—no dice. Neither this nor any of the other suggestions (e.g. turning the phone on and off) worked. “Guess you’ll have to call Verizon,” my wife said.

“I’ll need to borrow your phone, then,” I said, “since . . . uh . . . my phone isn’t working.”

“Oh yeah . . . that’s right. But I have to leave now for an appointment and other errands. I won’t be back until this afternoon. Looks like you’ll have to go to the Verizon store.”

Twenty minutes later, I pulled into a parking slot in front of the Verizon outlet closest to home. As I did, I was greeted by the head-on reflection of the front-end of my car in the plate-glass of the storefront. On the short drive I’d missed the “headlight out” icon on my dash. Here now, the problem was staring me in the face. “Later,” I told myself. “Meanwhile, you need a working phone.”

Thirty hours later, I was using the flashlight function of my new iPhone 17 to illuminate the interior of the housing for the driver-side headlight of my car. I was no longer in the Verizon parking lot. With hood raised, my car was wheels-to-curb outside an Auto Zone store a mile from our house. Removing the three-inch cap from the housing was so easy, you could’ve mistaken me for a gear-head. Not so in the case of twisting the old plug-with-new-bulb into place inside the housing. Given the godawful design of the thing, achieving sufficient leverage to lock in the bulb and plug was a test to separate amateurs from pros. After a good 10 minutes of futile effort, I went back inside the store for assistance.

Karl, the old guy manager who’d handled my purchase had repaired to a distant aisle. Now up front behind the counter was a young guy, maybe 30, dressed in Auto Zone black. It took me a few seconds to realize he was wheelchair bound.

“Can I help you?” he asked cheerfully.

“It would be great if you could,” I said. “I’m having a quite a time trying to replace a headlight—with the one I just purchased here.”

“Lemme see if I can help,” the clerk said. Without a hint of hesitation, he wheeled himself out from behind the counter and headed straight for the exit. “Follow me.”

As I watched him maneuver around the front corner of my car to find the best position, I noticed that he might actually have better leverage from a seated position than I’d had standing. In the time it takes an authentic gear-head to say, “Got it,” he managed to remove the old bulb from the plug. Holding the bulb up between his fingers, he raised it for me to see and said, “That’s what I’d call a blown bulb.”

I carefully removed the new bulb from its packaging, touching only its plastic base and handed it to my volunteer mechanic.

For the next half hour he tried locking the bulb and plug back in place. I was amazed by his patience and persistence and studied efforts to gain better sight and leverage over the whole business. He even went so far as to attempt a partial take-down of the entire headlamp assembly. At one point an older off-duty undercover cop (a regular at the store apparently, given his familiarity with the mechanic) pulled up near my car and on his way into the store and remarked about “how much fun” we appeared to be having. On his way out, he told me that replacing headlights on new vehicles is a lost cause. “I had an SUV that was so bad,” he said, they had to disassemble things down to the front tire in order to get at the headlight. But I gotta ’64 Dodge at home,” he said, “and on that car it takes under a minute. Cars these days? They make ‘em so you can’t fix ‘em.”

“Is that ’64 Dodge for sale?” I asked.

“Ha! No way,” he said before wishing us good luck with our project.

The store clerk-turned-mechanic didn’t want to quit. I, on the other hand, was fully prepared to throw in the towel and take the car to our local garage tomorrow and see what they could do—for under $500 in labor costs for “tearing things down to the front tire.” I joked about my other options too: “Or I could just not drive at night,” I said, “or drive with a car with one badly-aimed headlight, dangling from its wires, or one that jiggles up and down.”

In any event, I had to persuade this remarkable guy that it was time to call a time-out. He finally relented.

Before parting ways, however, I wanted to get some of his story—starting with how he’d landed in a wheelchair. He otherwise seemed to be in very good shape, and I assumed that he’d met with some debilitating accident and by force of character and personality—which I discerned in his efforts on my behalf—he’d overcome some terrible mishap.

“You’ve really got a winning personality,” I said. “If you don’t mind my asking, what put you in a wheelchair?”

“Motorcycle accident. Nine years ago.”

Somehow, someway, the guy had gotten back in the saddle and resumed his life. “I used to participate in a lot of rolling sports—you know, baseball, hockey, basketball—but I gave them up. I still work out, but I avoid all contact sports. Even baseball, which technically isn’t a contact sport, but if you’re in one of these,” he said, as he gently slapped his palms on the low arms of his streamlined wheelchair, “and you get injured, you can’t just work off or walk off your injuries. You wind up bed-ridden, and that’s bad. You get bed sores, and your recovery time winds up being much longer, so now I avoid things that are likely to involve injury.”

I asked him his name (Matt) and again told him how much I appreciated his time and effort. As I drove off, I pondered Matt’s extraordinary courage, resilience, and good cheer, not to mention his willingness to assist with the stubborn headlight.

Matt is yet another example of the “really good people” who reside in our midst. With such people in mind, we must not lose hope and faith in ourselves. However treacherous the current waters of our country, people such as Matt are not giving up or going away. From their example we must draw encouragement to overcome our own challenges, personal and collective.

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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson