Hodgepodge 234/365 - Owner's Manual

I have owned my no-longer-quite-so-new Subaru for a year and a half now, and only today did I realize that the visors don't just flip up and down and swing to the side, but they slide for tricky sun-blocking maneuvers! What a revelation.

Then too, ever since I bought the car, I've wondered about the funny little + and – paddles behind the steering wheel. I sort of know what they do—they slow down or speed up the car; indeed, I used them for the first time just last week, impromptu, and found that they also mess with the tachometer. Perhaps it's time to get beyond that "sort of knowing" into true mastery.

I'd also like to know what the difference between M and D is on the gearshift.

And then there's the question of where the spare tire lives, and how one extricates it, and where the tire iron is, and the lug wrench, and the jack. If there even is a spare tire . . . (I mean, a full-on one, rather than one of those dinky for-emergency-purposes-only ones, which, ew).

It may be time to bring the owner's manual in for a little bedtime reading. Who knows what else new and wonderful I'll discover? It may make me fall in love all over again.