Another driving adventure

I never would have thought since starting this blog-writing month that so many of my posts would be about cars and driving. But here's another adventure involving me, all alone, in my car.

We have a sick kid at home, so I decided to make my life easier by getting takeout tonight for dinner. So I dashed off around 6pm leaving Greg and Ellie at home while I picked up Chipotle for Greg and me and Panda Express for Ellie. I drove for awhile in search of a Chipotle, since I still don't know the area too well, and in my search I happened upon a Panda Express in a strip mall. So I stopped over and ran in to pick up Ellie's dinner.

Five minutes later, with Ellie's chicken and rice in hand, I got back in the car and started it up... it was dead. Nothing. The car did not even attempt to turn over. I swore for awhile, then searched through my bag for my cell phone to call Greg. No phone. I left it at home. I swore for awhile more and looked out through the car window to see where I should go next. That perfect weather the universe decided to give me the other day? The universe decided to take it away. It's 45 degrees and raining tonight. But I decided to walk across the parking lot to the Loews to see about finding a pay phone.

It turns out pay phones don't exist anymore. Everyone has cell phones, so they don't even put pay phones in stores. The woman at the return desk said I could use their store phone to call Greg, until I told her that I would be calling him on a cell phone that has an out of state number. She couldn't let me dial long distance. But she thought some more and decided to get the manager over to let me dial out under his special long-distance-enabling code. I could tell the manager was only going to let me have one phone call.

I called Greg. He didn't answer. So I left him a message and told him to call me at Loews, then waited. And waited. I stared at the woman at the return desk. She stared back at me. She asked me if I knew what the problem could be. I said no. We waited and waited some more and Greg still didn't call back.

Finally, she took pity on me. She said if I wanted to wait a few minutes, she'd be off work and she could call a tow truck for me and the tow truck guy could maybe fix the car or at least tow it away and get me home. I was eternally grateful.

So we left Loews after about 10 minutes and she let me use her cell phone to call Greg again. Again, he didn't answer the phone and again I left him a message to call me. Then this wonderful woman who was not asking for a helpless waif like me to walk into her store just as she was getting off work called a tow truck for me and then waited for half an hour for it to arrive. She was from heaven.

We waited for the truck at a sandwich shop, where at least I was able to buy her and her son dinner as a small token of thanks. Greg and Ellie finally got my messages and met me at the car and when the tow truck guy arrived he was able to jump it. There's something wrong with the battery.

After many profuse thank yous to my guardian angels, Greg and I drove the cars home. The battery is dead again, so we have mechanics in our immediate future.