If the car is a rockin'...

Sometimes, when I am feeling a little down, I read some of my old blog posts. They always cheer me up. Not because I am funny, but because I can fool myself into thinking that those posts were written soooooo long ago, back before I really knew anything about anything, back before I became the wise and astute person I am today. I nod sagely as I read the accounts of my foibles and commend myself. Surely, I am not such a jackass now.

But, yep, I am.

We ran out of gas on the way home from Clintonville this afternoon. As the car ceased to move forward and we coasted over to the shoulder of the highway, Chris and I were puzzled. We used all of our car mechanic terminology. Transmission? Uh… Battery? Mechanical gear-do-whoppy thing? Aha! It’s got no gas!

Well, shit.

Why’d we even BUY this car if it was just going to run out of gas?

Oh.

Right. We didn’t buy this car. Chris’ parents gave it to us.

Well, Christ, is NOTHING built to last these days? God damned planned obsolescence. What do you mean we’re supposed to keep putting gas into it? What the heck for? Didn’t we just do that, like three hundred miles ago? What did it do with all of THAT gas? If the car is just going to burn it up, why the hell should we keep buying gas for it?

This presented a difficult situation. The next exit was approximately way the hell away. It was forty degrees and we had two sleeping kids, no stroller and no idea where, exactly, we where. Chris walked a few minutes to the houses nearby and knocked. No answer. No luck. No gas. After weighing our options (actually, there weren’t any. I am putting that in here because I feel like there should be some option weighing in most stories) we called Chris’ parents.

We whiled the hour or so away by telling stories, eating Jay’s Halloween candy while he slept (to keep up our energy in case a freak snow storm should bury the car and we would need to use our bare hands to free the tires) and trying to find bushes big enough to cover us while we peed in them. We remarked on how, when we were dating, we never in a million years could have simply pulled off to the shoulder of the highway to make out. Had we tried, entire squads of police along with the tri-county air patrol would have caught the whiff of our hormones, threw on their sirens and used their spotlights to light up our foggy windows like Wrigley Field. Troops of boy scouts would have paraded by. The New York Marathon would have spontaneously rerouted itself to encircle our car. Legions of truck drivers would have pulled over to see if we were o.k.

But as a legitimately married couple with kids and dogs, no one even looked twice at our stranded car. In fact, a police car passed us without so much as slowing down. I suggested we get down to business in the back of the station wagon if we wanted to get someone to pull over, but Jay stirred and we shelved the idea.

Steve and Jean drove an hour to get to us and brought a can of gas. We did not mention that it was the car that THEY gave us that ran out of gas (seriously, WTF?). We figured they must have felt bad enough, but did make sure to give them plenty of disapproving looks. We pulled into the next gas station we saw and filled up. The rest of the trip home was uneventful. Also, we have finally figured out what that annoying bright orange gas pump-like icon on our dash board is. It’s a reminder to have plenty of candy and a fully charged cell phone ready.