Windsheild wipers--who knew?

Monday night I got rained on while driving home, and my widshield wipers did nothing more than smear the water in with stuck-on pollen to make an opaque mess of my windshield. I got home, but it wasn't safe. So I needed to replace my windshied wipers, and I needed to do it before it started raining today.

So this morning before work (I beat the traffic by going in later) I go and buy wipers according to the year/make listing. I get them home, and I can't even figure out how to take the old ones off. Owen was home, so I drag him out to help me. He manages to get one wiper off, but can't get the new one on. Neither can I.A good 30 min of trying ensues. The fitting mechanism looks different from the old one, so we decide these must be the wrong type. I drive to another car-stuff store, only to find they sell the exact same brand. Then this nice worker-dude asks me if I need help, and I tell him what happened. So he goes out to my car, I give him the new wipers, and he gets the other old wiper off and the new ones on in less than 5 seconds--no exageration. I felt *really* stupid.

Sprinkled on the drive into work, so I know they work ;-) . But jeeze, I still don't know what we did wrong...