Foolish Pride

On Friday I ran out of gas. At work. In the parking lot.

I was devestated. I started to push the car back into the parking space but the Honda Pilot is heavy and I was having a great deal of difficulty. A co-worker came to my rescue and I was at least somewhat happy that it was a male co-worker that wouldn’t later make fun of me for the rest of my career at TI when he passed me in the hallway.

“Eddie you need some help?” Chris asked with genuine concern.

“Yeah, I think I ran out of gas.” I said miserably with a chuckle of embarrassment. “This has never happened to me before.”

The truth is I’ve ran out of gas a number of times in my life, but not once in the last 10 years.  When I was younger I had a truck that had a broken gas gauge and it left me stranded numerous times. My main reason for not filling up is because I AM LAZY. Gas is a pain in the butt to stop and buy. It costs money and eats up precious minutes that I could be using to something productive, like eating malt vinegar chips and swilling soda while watching HGTV.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” Chris asked.

“Well, I live really close by and so if you could run me home that would be great.”

I had friends coming over for a dinner and game night and I had much to do before their arrival.

I got home and pondered how I was going to make my last minute grocery store purchases without a car? I decided to just ride my bike to the grocery store and then when one of my guests asked, “Where’s your car?” I said, “Oh, I left it at work so I would be forced to ride my bike around town this weekend.” The lie came easily because I HAD REHEARSED IT. Can you believe it. How dumb and I?

Saturday morning I woke up and wondered how funny I would look if I was carrying a gas can to my office. Just two miles from my house it wouldn’t be a long walk. My brain processed all the possible options: Call Roger and Jes, Ask my next door neighbor, ride my bike with the gas can, wait until dark and then make the trek to my office building. I finally decided to disquise the gas can with plastic trash bags and ride my bike to the office. It worked flawlessly. The bags made it look like I had made  a grocery run. It was still so early in the morning that there were few cars on the street and although the gas can contained about 3 gallons of gas in it, I was able to balance it rather easily on the left side of the bike handle.

Lastly, I needed a funnel for the gas. What to do, what to do. I emptied out a bottle of Mrs. Meyers lavender fabric softener, cut the end off it and washed it thoroughly, bam!- homemade funnel created.

I got my Honda running with little effort after I filled the tank with abotu 2 gallons of gas. I immediately drove to the nearest gas station and filled up the tank and was delighted to find that gas was only $2.99 a gallon! Sweet.

So I got my car running without having to call on anyone (other than my co-worker Chris) for help, something I’ve resigned myself not to do. I don’t like being needy and sometimes it’s good to just figure things out on your own.