February 7, 2020
Dear Everyone:
My not-so-new car (I’ve had it for eight months now) has a touch screen
built into the dashboard.
It’s very helpful.
It has Navigation, to help me find my way to somewhere; more importantly
it can show me how to get home again.
If I choose to turn the radio on, the screen will tell me what
station, or channel, I’m listening to and may even display the artist
and name of the piece of music.
There’s also a “Trip Computer” that will tell me how far I’ve driven
since the last time I filled the gas tank, how much gas I’ve been using,
and even compute the gas-per-mileage for me.
And, significantly, if the volume in the gas tank falls too low
in the car’s opinion, it will chirp at me and flash a message on the
screen: “Find the nearest
gas station now!”
There’s a host of other things the screen can do for me that I’ve barely
begun to figure out.
There’s just one downside, which has recently manifested itself:
It reflects sunshine when it comes in through one of the side
windows. This has not been
much of a problem so far.
But now that Winter is upon us, the sun is less overhead and much closer
to the horizon.
Ordinarily, this would not be an issue.
That’s because the car’s designers assume that the average person
is male and of medium height or taller.
So the reflected sunlight would touch the driver around the same
place as his tie, assuming he’s wearing a tie.
In any case, the reflection would never come close to the
driver’s eyes.
I, however, am not average height, even for a woman.
I am, instead, how shall I put it?
Petite? Diminutive?
Abbreviated? Compact?
Low-rider? Built
close to the ground?
Face it, I’m short.
And that pesky sunshine hits the touch screen and careens directly into
my eyes, while I’m trying to drive.
Not a good situation.
I needed a way to avoid that very bright light.
I tried draping a scarf over the screen.
That didn’t work very well.
It blocked the light, but it meant I couldn’t see the screen,
thus effectively making it unusable.
Ditto a very large Post-It Note.
Not good.
Eventually, I came up with an approach that seems to work.
I got a sheet of non-glare plastic, cut it to a size to fit over
the screen, and held it in place with some elastic from my sewing kit.
Every respectable sewing kit includes elastic.
You never know when it will come in handy.
More recently, I replaced some of the elastic with masking tape, to hold
the sheet in place near the bottom of the screen.
The beauty of it is that I can easily see the screen through the
plastic, while direct sunlight is diffused, and touching the screen
through the protective plastic works just fine.
And where did I find such a useful piece of plastic?
At the neighborhood Really Big Blue Office Supply Warehouse
Store, of course. I simply
bought a package of “non-glare” sheet protectors, plastic sleeves
designed to hold a typical 8-½ by 11-inch sheet of paper.
That way, I could sacrifice as many of them as needed to discover
just the right height, width and length of plastic to solve the problem.
Which brings us to the next problem also caused by the Winter sun:
Bright sunlight in my eyes when I’m walking outside.
In this case, I don’t think being a foot taller would make much
difference. The winter sun
is almost always in your eyes.
For this, I found a simple solution:
A hat.
Specifically, a light, cotton hat the I designed and crocheted while we
were visiting “Richard” and “Marge” between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The hat has a brim wide enough to cast shade over my eyes.
And it’s light and supple enough that I can just roll it up and
stuff it inside the back pocket of my purse when it’s not needed.
“Jeannie” has remarked, disdainfully, that it looks like the kind of hat
a fisherman would wear. She
needn’t be so scornful. All
fisherpersons fully understand the importance of being able to see
without being blinded by sunlight.
After all, they need to be able to focus all their attention on
the important business of terrorizing fish.
Love, as always,
Pete
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