Pop quiz

We spent the afternoon at my friend Rita's house yesterday. When it was time to go we all piled in the car and Rita came out to see us off. I was in the process of backing out when Rita asked if "that thing" was supposed to be hanging down under the vehicle.

We have some old rubber floor mats (actually they're not old. But they're cheap) and I figured one of them was splitting and that a piece was hanging out the passenger door. But when I went around to look, there was indeed something hanging down under the car. A wire. Half a wire, actually, all shredded and stripped at the hanging-down end. And farther back under there was, of course, the complementary shredded other end.

We checked the headlights and brake lights and turn signals and everything seemed to work - and the car had started up with no problem - so we pretty much said "oh well" and were on our way. Dad offered the most likely theory: back when we lived in NC we had rented U-Haul trailers a time or two, and he suggested that this was the wire that took the juice back to the place where you plug in the trailer lights there by the hitch.

Today we stopped by the mechanic and it turns out we weren't quite as thorough as we thought in our self-testing...it was the reverse-light cable. I dunno why THAT particular cable runs loose under the car while the rest are apparently safely routed through some more sheltered part of the vehicle, but there you have it. The mechanic spliced the wires and routed it up over some under-car part to keep it a little more sheltered.

So how did it get shredded? I had a theory and the mechanic agreed with me. If you are a regular reader of this blog and have been paying attention, then you have sufficient information to reach the same conclusion. Anybody?