There is nothing worse than a dead battery - really??

There is nothing worse than a dead battery, that is what a commercial told me.  Nothing worse than a dead battery, I am not sure I agree with that assumption.  The commercial starts out with folks trying to start their car and then realizing that the battery is dead.  The first ones we see is mother with her daughter who says - no, not now.   I am not sure they could make either the mother or the daughter look more pathetic, it was stupid in its imagery.  The next victim of this horrific sequence of events is a middle aged man with a beard, he has no talking lines but he just looks dumbfounded, as if someone told him that his toes were going to be cut off one at a time.  From him we run into a woman who is uttering, come on please, it appeared that her world was literally coming to an end and the Reaper was waiting right outside her door.

My favorite one was the man who starts out saying, ohhh and then laughs, almost satanically, and then mutters, great.  I like him the best because I have reacted exactly like that before when my car would not start.  The next targets of the dead battery are a couple who look like they are going to miss dinner with her folks at which they would be told they will be getting the inheritance, which since they won’t be there - they will not receive and they know it.  The next poor bastard is sweating like a politician under oath and looking as if he is getting ready to have a stroke and appearing moments away from crying, my heart goes out to that guy.  Him and the lady who is sitting in her SUV in a work parking lot with a monsoon beating down from the skies, her life is over, it is obvious.
  

We move from there to folks who have purchased the Duralast battery, the one that is engineered to start, day in and day out we are told and this technological marvel operates flawlessly, even under the most extreme conditions.  Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these batteries  from the swift completion of their appointed starting tasks, I am not sure it was worded exactly like that but that is what I heard.  That damn battery has been proven tough, I am not sure exactly how but we are lead to believe that a testing program the likes of which might be used on the international space station is in place to ensure your car batteries operation, every time all the time.  No specific testing methodologies were noted but I am sure there were some scientific and repeatable testing methods are used.

That commercial was just wrong on so many levels that I wonder what dunder-head would buy that battery based on that commercial.  The one fact they neglected to mention was this, that wonder battery they are hocking will one day be dead and leave those smiling idiots in the same position as the folks they showed in the commercial, yeah the ones who did not have the Duralast battery.  The primary killer of batteries is age, although charging causes the sulfate deposited on the plates to return to the acid, the process is not perfect. A small amount of sulfate insulating residue (sulfation) remains on the plates of the battery. With each charge/discharge cycle of the battery this residue accumulates. This process eventually results in diminished electrical conductivity of the plates as well as permanently diluted sulfuric acid and eventually the battery will no longer maintain a charge.  That happens slowly until you are that person muttering aloud or under your breath - oh, great!

So I got to wondering about the comment of “nothing worse” than having a dead battery.  How ridiculous is that statement?  Bride and I drive old cars and there are times that they won’t start.  Is it an inconvenience, sure.  Is there nothing worse – of course there are worse things.  My old Jalopy is a three speed so I never worry about a dead battery.  I have, on more than one occasion, just pushed it a little bit and dumped the clutch and voila, she be started right up.  In Brides car we keep some jumper cables for such inevitabilities.

When I think about all the craziness in the world I am not sure how having a dead battery on our car can be called “nothing worse”.  I would think that our Military dying in far-away lands is far worse than a bit of inconvenience in our ability to get from point a to point b.  I would think the murder rate in your home town being ridiculously high is much worse than being able to run down to the corner store for your damn Twinkies.  I would think that children being abused does not even fall on the same scale of “nothing worse”.  I could go on and on but my point is the stupidity of the advertising we are bombarded with.  Nothing worse, maybe there could be nothing worse than never seeing that foolish damn commercial.  I am making a pledge right now, it will be cold day in hell before I ever buy a Duralast battery – just because your commercials are idiotic.

Nothing worse my ass, what idiots!!