Men

Over Christmas we hit a dog and had to have our car repaired. After several weeks of the car being out of commission, the body shop called and said the car was ready. We picked up the car which worked long enough to drop Donald's parents off at the airport and then it proceeded to kill on me and would not restart. So, I had the car towed back to the shop. A few days later, the shop calls with a laundry list of new parts the car needed and proceeds to tell me the car is out of gas and that is why the car died on me. I told the mechanic that unless the gauge had somehow been broken the car had not been out of gas. He said the gas light was on. I told him the gas light comes on at 1/8th of a tank and that it had only come on about three miles before the car died. Needless to say, the men at the shop were convinced I was a stupid female who didn't know how to put gas in her car. Several days later the car was once again "ready to go" except for still being empty of gas. So, Donald and I bring in a can of gas and the car starts right up. All the men, including my husband were looking fairly smug about their diagnosis of a lack of gas. Donald and I leave the shop, drive one block down and return our rental car, pull out to the light, and the car kills and won't restart while in the turn lane. I call the shop and the man has the audacity to ask me if I have gassed it yet. No!!! But it says I have over an 1/8th of a tank (impossible if it was out of gas seeing that Donald had only added a gallon) and I had only driven it a block. How the story ends, is that the car was never out of gas, an additional number of parts needed to be replaced, and the smug men had to eat their words. The moral of the story is that just because a female is driving the car does not mean it is simply out of gas, or she's locked her keys in the car, or she hasn't had her oil changed. I may not know very much about cars, but I know enough to know when I'm out of gas. Also, I must say thank you to my female friends who helped me out- Shauna, who I called in hysterics at the thought of me not being home when Brayden got off the school bus and who dropped everything to run over to my house and meet him, and to Bonnie who happened to see Donald and I break down in the turn lane and gave us a lift home and then offered her car to me for the day so I could keep a doctor's appointment. Some girls are very cool.