We have got to do something about our national jumper cable disorder

A clamp divided against itself cannot stand!

My car battery died the other day so I had to flag down a nearby motorist to jump my car for me. I don’t know about you, but to me this is always one of the most exhausting experiences imaginable, because few things make people more superstitious and neurotic than jumping a car battery. Everyone has a weird ritual they have to invoke when going about this; everyone you meet has a different routine, a unique process which they think is the only way possible to jump your bat. A few of the variations I’ve encountered:

• Red must go on positive, black on negative.

• Black must go on positive, red on negative.

• You have to connect the positives on both batteries first, then the negatives on both batteries.

• You have to connect the negatives on both batteries first, then the positives.

• You have to connect the negative and positive on the dead battery, the positive on the live battery, then “ground” the last clamp on the chassis of the car.

• You have to connect the negative and positive on the live battery, the positive on the dead battery, then “ground” the last clamp on the chassis of the car.

• The live battery car must be off.

• The live battery car must be on.

• You have to rev the live car’s engine before starting the dead battery.

I have encountered all of these in one form or another. Probably there are more. And one thing I have realized is that you absolutely cannot dissuade anyone from their beliefs about the proper way to jump a battery. It’s just a completely inflexible cosmology. People will get burned at the stake rather than renounce their battery-jumping credo.

I’m not sure why that should be the case—why this very simple process has become draped with such incomprehensible mysticism and arcana. It’s like the manufacturers of jumper cables are trying to pit us all against each other. Maybe there’s something going on there. Who makes the jumper cables? Is it the Illuminati? If so, it’s working very well.

Here’s how I’ve always jumped my car batteries. I flatter myself that I’ve had a lot of experience with it, often because I’ve had crummy cars with awful electrical systems and/or I’ve left the lights on in a lot of them. But this is what I’ve always done and it has never failed me once:

• Connect one color to the positive and one to the negative on one battery, doesn’t matter which battery; do the same on the other battery, matching the colors to the respective terminals; try to start the dead car; if it doesn’t start, fire up the other car and let it run for a bit before trying again.

Boom, done. It works every time. It has literally never not worked.

I know there’s some sort of argument that this is a hazardous way to do this—that you have to ground the last cable, and/or you have to start with the dead battery first, or else you’re risking a hydrogen gas explosion due to the sparks that might result or something. If you’re worried about that, sure, don’t do it my way. But I’m going to be honest with you: I’ve never heard of that happening, ever. Like ever. I’m not saying it’s never happened, I’m saying I’ve never heard of it happening. I’ve never seen a news report about it, I’ve never seen a TikTok video or a viral Twitter post about it. We live in an age where traditional media and social media are absolutely voracious about this sort of thing and yet there are no reports about someone connecting the last clamp to a battery and blowing it up. If these stories exist in droves I’ll read them and mull my life choices over. But where are they?

So, to sum it up: We need to break ourselves of our weird national jumper cable neuroses. Life can be much simpler than this. We need a jumper cable peace accord with an immediate cessation of all jumper cable hostilities. War is over, if you want it!