I Tried Doing An Oil Change While Looking After My Baby And It Didn’t Go Well

“David, I have a meeting Saturday. Are you cool to look after Delmar (not his real name) for a few hours?” my wife Elise (not her real name) asked me last week. “Of course!” I replied. “Should be no problem!” The only problem was, I had to do an oil change on my BMW i3S; surely this would be fine, right?

Raising an infant is hard. Much harder than I had initially thought. They need your time — always. They’re basically little barnacles clinging to you or your spouse or your caretaker 24/7. It’s truly remarkably how helpless a four-month old baby is compared to, say, a four-month old kitten, who can climb trees and hunt mice and probably do taxes.

This all became extremely apparent during my routine oil-change session on my BMW i3S. No, I’m not talking about my ridiculous transmission IV-drip situation, I’m talking about changing the oil on the 600cc two-cylinder motorcycle engine — the range extender. That process involved simply taking off the trunk floor and engine cover, removing a drain plug, removing an oil filter, reinstalling both, then spinning on a fresh filter (with lubed o-ring) and pouring in three quarts of fresh oil. That’s it.

It’s the easiest job in the book, which is why I figured I could just sit baby-Delmar outside on his little rocker while I quickly slid under my range-extended carbon fiber commuter car; and I’d be done before he even noticed.

 

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When I approached Delmar and proposed my plan, he didn’t have a whole lot to say. There he sat in his rocker-chair, bouncing back and forth, eyes laser-locked on me, following me around. He was bored. He wanted me to pick him up and walk him around. And sing Elton John’s “Sad Songs (Say So Much)” to him. And dance like a fool. And do my admittedly-excellent Mickey Mouse or Goofy voices.

“Those are good ideas,” I replied to a baby who hadn’t actually said anything. “But, what if, instead of those, I drain probably-perfectly-good oil out of an engine I barely use, install a filter I spent far too many hours researching on Bob Is The Oil Guy, and then pour in some 0W-30 that I also spent far too much time researching? How does that sound?”

There he sat, bouncing, his giant beautiful eyes just wanting to hang out with me.

I took that as a yes.

And so outside into the driveway we went, him strapped into his bouncy-chair, and me quickly jogging over to my BMW i3 up on ramps. I took my BMW i3’s cargo area floor/engine insulator out, then grabbed my torx wrench and began zipping off the i3’s engine cover. I peeked around the C-pillar; Delmar seemed to be doing OK. One by one, I took out the torx screws, frusted that BMW had used some strange rubber nuts that tended to spin in the carbon fiber body, requiring me to somehow hold them in place to get the screws out. “Hey baby Delmar!” I yelled to let him know I was still there. I zipped the last few screws out, then took off the oil fill cap.

Then I slid under my i3. “Hey Delmar!” I yelled. “My cute baby boy!” Lying on my back, I looked around my rear wheel to see Delmar sitting there quietly, looking at his surroundings. “Whew, it’s going well,” I said to myself as I grabbed a 14mm wrench, undid the drain plug, and watched as fresh amber oil poured into a dirty catch-pan. “Drain drain drain!” I exclaimed to the 2.75 quarts of oil taking their sweet time exiting my engine.

I heard commotion around my rear wheel; I took a peek. Delmar was bouncing around, his head panning and pitching, his legs kicking. “There comes a time when we all need to share a little pain!” I sang aloud. “When ironing out the rough spots…is the hardest parts when memories remain!”

No change. “Oh drat, that always works!” I thought.

The oil was now dripping slowly enough for me to reinstall the plug with a new copper gasket. I tightened that, then began removing the oil filter. “Son of a bitch! Who cranked this stupid filter on with all their might? Why!? Haven’t we been through this!” I yelled. “Sunova b—”

Before I could continue my curse-therapy, I began hearing some noises coming from a certain bouncing chair-ish area. I peeked my head out from under my car.

I was on borrowed time.

“Shit, come on oil filter!” I exclaimed as I twisted the damn metal can with both hands as hard as I could. “Whichever technician did this deserves a lifetime of misfortune, Hecter Zeroni style!” Try as I might, this thing wasn’t coming off.

But it didn’t matter, because at this point Delmar was pissed. “WAAAAAA WAAA” he yelled. “BANG!” I hit my head on the bottom of my i3 as I hurriedly arose from the oily driveway and rushed over to the displeased fruit of my loins.

“Hey baby Delmar!” I said calmly as I picked him up. He immediately stopped crying. We went inside, and I placed him down on his playmat, only to see a big stain of what appeared to be 5W-30 on his forehead.

“Oh no, Elise is going to kill me!” I ran to grab some Dawn dishsoap, and as soon as I left the room Delmar started crying. Then I realized I can’t put dish soap on a baby’s head (can I? Who the hell knows) so I ran around to find his baby-shampoo. “WAAAA” Delmar yelled impatiently, probably wondering why the hell his forehead now contained a boundary layer, and also wondering what the hell I was doing.

“One second!” I yelled. “Turn ’em on, Turn ’em on, turn on those saaaad songs!” I yelled, desperately.

I grabbed the soap from the bathroom. “Oh crap I need paper towels.” I ran back to the bathroom, Delmar still crying.

Eventually I got the oil off his head, and I calmed him down. For the next two hours he held onto me like a barnacle. I played him songs, I danced like a fool, I fed him — it was a nonstop job, and an opportunity to realize just how stressful these past four months have probably been for my wife Elise as I was off at work. I couldn’t even do half an oil change; I had to be really careful handling him with my oily hands (their typical state) and I still screwed up; and when I did get Delmart to fall asleep, that little orange cat we adopted from my dilapidated Jeep Grand Cherokee in the work parking lot meowed and meowed, threatening to awaken Delmar and cut short my rest.

Raising a baby is hard, and wrenching on cars while doing it is going to be extremely difficult; it will rely heavily on the hard work of my dear wife, for whom I am immensely grateful.