This last week has seen me traveling 20 miles (one way) each day. Our road is 30 miles long -which pretty much means I have been traveling from one end of the island to the other, at least twice a day. Between working on one side of the island and living on the other -plus various house/dog sitting jobs everywhere in between -I have been putting in a lot of miles.
Sunday, I was in the middle of making my rounds (getting dogs, dropping dogs, getting other dogs) and the gas light blinked on. It indicated I had about 20 miles left before I would be stranded on the side of the road -and not wanting to walk somewhere in the middle of the night, I pulled into the gas station that happened to be right there.
Now I must stop here to say -normally, when I get gas -I leave everything in the car. I am super paranoid about blowing things up, so don’t use my cell phone or carry anything extra. I even will admit to tapping the car every so often to avoid electrical currents or whatever they are that could cause the entire gas station and myself go up in flames.
But this day. I was getting numerous texts about house sitting jobs, and since I am equally paranoid about texting and driving (read: $10,000 fines and jail time), I grabbed my phone when I jumped out of the car. Started the gas, then walked a good distance away to finish up my texting. I got a few gallons of gas (just to make it to where the cheaper gas is), took my card and went to open the door: But it wouldn’t open.
Because the dog had apparently gotten tired of hanging out with me, locked the door then went to sleep.
See? Sound asleep!
It took a few minutes for everything to stack up and for it to hit me: I was locked out of the car. All the windows were up. The dogs were going to be of no assistance -BUT! I had my phone.
The smugness! It’s like he’s saying “Yep, I know what I did!”
I laughed, then called mom.
Who didn’t answer.
I tried another fifty some odd times -to no avail. Just a few hours prior I had turned her cell phone off for her (so it wouldn’t ring in church), we don’t have a phone at home and she wasn’t at the shop. I called a few more times -just for good measure.
I text a few people in town to see if they were in the area. No one answered.
I started to panic.
I emailed Amanda -if for nothing more, to have someone to laugh with me. Because really, what else do you do in a situation like that? I had help -she was just a billion miles away in the UK, so, you know, a lot of good that was going to do me.
But then I remembered: My good friends lived right up the road. Surely they would have a hanger I could borrow! I didn’t know what, exactly, I would do with said hanger -but I figured I would cross that bridge when I got there.
Thankfully they answered my frantic texts and showed up about 15 minutes later with a hanger and a hammer. Because we all know a good hammer works in situations like those too.
Apparently just a few days prior they had locked their keys in a car as well. Having had just went through the same thing a few days ago, they had all the needed tools to do a proper ‘break in.’ It took all of about 5 minutes and I was on my way.
…and now? I don’t dare leave the keys (or my phone) in the car when I get out!
But it leaves me wondering: How many people take their keys with them when they pump gas? It honestly is something I have never considered doing before this weekend.
Tangled Thoughts 