I wish I possessed many different skills. I wish I had some true musical talent. I want to cook fanciful dishes. I dream of building some piece of furniture that blow people’s minds.

But, most of all, I really wish I could fix my own car.

I love my Saturn, even though General Motors kicked the brand to the curb. I am on my second Saturn and would gladly get a third one if they still made them.

This model does have one problem, however. The engineers designed it in such a way that a normal person cannot change a headlight. This doesn’t mean that it’s a little difficult. They literally force you to remove the entire fender to change a stinking headlight.

When I passed on this information to a friend once, he doubted me. There had to be an easy way. I Googled and Googled and Googled until my little fingers could Google no more and found many others dealing with the same problem.

So when a headlight – or any light for that matter – goes out, I have to make an appointment with our mechanic and have them handle a task I should be able to deal with on my own.

This is where my wish for motor repair skills comes into play. The process is not impossible, just impossible enough for a normal person to attempt. I can’t get any item I buy from a store back into the box the way it came. How do you think I would manage putting the fender back on my car?

The worst part about all of this is that I had to swap cars with my wife to have the light fixed. The timing just didn’t work for a weekend repair so we both had to suffer.

My wife has a fine car. It does what she needs to without the bells and whistles included in my car, which we bought several years after hers.

That meant I had a commute where I could not mute the radio from my steering wheel and a day around town where she had to fiddle with the cords to listen to the radio. I had unfortunately left one thing unconnected, which completely threw her off.

I also had to actually look down at time to see where I was putting my coffee mug because I have become so used to the location in my car. And there is always my confusion over the emergency brake because mine is a pedal on the floor and hers is a handle next to the driver’s seat. I always screw that up.

On the bright side, I got a chance to listen to a CD all the way through because her car doesn’t have a place to hook up an iPod. I just had to remember to turn the volume down when I parked the car for the evening.

As I completed that task and slid the seat back to her preferred position, I let out a silent prayer for some magical power which would allow me the knowledge to fix my car whenever I wanted.

Of course, I could just pray to win the lottery and hire a mechanic to work for me. That sounds like a more fun idea.