Don't Tell My Dad

I know my mom reads my blog sometimes, and my brother occasionally checks in, and even his mom will stop by, but I'm pretty sure my dad does not spend any of his time on the Internet. This is a good thing, because if my father would read this, he would either die from a stroke, or he would disown me as a daughter.

You see, my dad is a practical guy. I think I've written this before, but my father's picture has to be beside the term "risk management" in the dictionary. He's cautious, responsible, and as he would say, "simply a realist -- not a pessimist." That's still up for debate in the family.

My dad tried to teach me many lessons - turn off the lights, close the door behind you, don't leave your keys in the car...and fill up the gas tank when it hits half. Pretend the half mark is zero, and you will never have to worry that you might get into a situation where you'll run out of fuel.

One might say I've struggled with that last lesson. Two days ago I was in a town 20 miles away when my low fuel light came on. No problem, I thought, I'll just fill up after my son's doctor appointment. Turns out I didn't have any cash, or my checkbook, and I had for some silly reason taken my credit card out of my purse. Oh, and I hadn't yet activated my new debit card. More of dad's lessons down the drain...

That wasn't a huge issue at the time, because I had plenty of fuel to get home that afternoon. However, as I was backing out of the driveway to take my son to school the next morning, I realized I was now VERY low on fuel. According to my dash, I had 17 miles to empty. We live in the country, my son's school is in the "country" (a very small unincorporated, gas-station-less town), and we were on tight time constraints. The school is 5-6 miles from my house, so I did the math and off we went.

At first all seemed to be going well, but it soon became apparent that the "miles left" were decreasing at a much faster rate of speed than the miles driven. In the six (max) miles to school, I went from having "17 miles to empty" down to 5. Hmmm....

I tried to call my husband to let him know he might need to be on standby. His cell phone was off, and his work phone was down. Great. I got my son into school, grabbed the books I needed, and came back out to attempt the journey home. When I started the van, the little screen on the dashboard read "0 miles to empty". It's a mystery to me how I went from 5 to 0 while sitting in a parking lot, but you gotta love technology.

Wondering what I was going to do, I looked out my window to see Jamie driving in to drop off her daughter. I quickly tried my husband's phones one more time, to no avail, and then jumped out to see if she would rescue an idiotic friend. She said yes, she could take me home (like she really had a choice - what was she going to say, "No, I hope you brought a coat"?). Her concern about whether I was having car trouble quickly turned to laughter as I sadly entertained her with my story of stupidity.

The van stayed at school for the day until my very pleased husband (he actually handled it quite well) was able to take a gas can to its rescue. Of course, when we pulled into the school parking lot to fix this little issue, my boss was walking out the front door to his car. Just what I needed to feel even more like a fool. I very maturely asked my husband not to get out with the gas can until my boss drove away. It worked, and all is well again.

The morals of my story: Don't trust the technology in your vehicle. And...if you ever see me looking distraught on the side of the road, know that I still haven't learned my lesson, and please pull over to rescue me!