N@50: Out of Gas!

As you all know, I was single a lot more years than I’ve been married.  And as a single woman, there were certain things that I did for safety reasons.  One of those was keeping a tank full of gas.  When I left home for my first job, my mom made me promise two things: 1) keep a tank full of gas, and 2) keep a blanket in the car in case you break down.  I’m sure she gave me other guidelines but I remember those two, probably because they fit with the situation I’m about to share.

My husband doesn’t have this obsession with the full tank of gas.  In fact, he will sometimes wait until the gas light comes on before filling up.  This I don’t understand.

Our philosophies came to a head yesterday when we had to pick up a colleague from the airport.  Hubby had taken me to the doctor earlier in the day and had commented that he needed to get gas before we left for the airport.  Well, somehow he never got around to doing it.  You can guess the rest of the story.

I was fiddling around on the computer grading papers and the time to leave for the airport sneaked up on me.  In a rush, I got myself together and headed out.  Hubby and I realized as soon as we got in the car that we had not gotten gas.  I suggested stopping at a local gas station before we left town.  Hubby declared that we could make it to the airport.

Though I was anxious about it, he turned out to be right.  We made it to the airport with a little time and very little gas to spare.  So we pulled into a gas station near the airport.  As hubby shut off the ignition, he made that sound he makes when things aren’t going right.  Guess what?  He had forgotten his wallet.  Guess what else? I hadn’t brought my purse.

So here we are at the gas station with no credit cards and no cash.  Well, I didn’t have any cash.  Turns out hubby had $4.50.  So we get $4.50 worth of gas and head to the airport to pick up my colleague.

Our car has a gauge that gives an estimate of how many miles we can get on the remaining gas.  It was close, but the numbers seemed to suggest that we could make it home.   Though my colleague offered to pay for gas for us, we decided to make it home on our fumes.

As we ride down the interstate, I’m watching the miles go down, down, down.  I breathed a sigh of relief when we made it to our exit, knowing my husband would pull into the first gas station and take my colleague up on his offer to pay for gas.

But no.  Hubby decides we can make it to his favorite gas station.  Unfortunately, about this time the mileage gauge reads “****”, not a good sign.  So we end up pulling into the next station (not my hubby’s favorite) and allowing our colleague to buy $10 worth of gas.

At this point, we are less than two miles from home, so we go by the house, pick up some cash and repay my colleague.  So all is well.

This is not the first time hubby and I have found ourselves with no money, no credit cards and no gas.  It happened once after church.  Fortunately, that time we were in town and stopped at hubby’s favorite station.  They know him there so they allowed us to pump and pay later.

So what did we learn from this?  Two things: 1) Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus when he comes to filling up the gas tank, and 2) Keep a $20 bill in the car at all times.

What’s embarrassing about this?  Just this week, hubby and I had been stressing to his daughter the importance of keeping gas in the car.

Another embarrassing thing? That colleague that we picked up at the airport was a job candidate.  Talk about making an impression.