Fueled Up

My 16-year-old daughter is a “throw caution to the wind” kind of woman. Case in point: She’ll say she’s going out to lunch with friends but has no money. “Then how will you pay for your food?” I ask. “Oh, it’ll all work out,” she’ll say. How??? I think. The diner might have a Free Food Give-Away Day? You might get lucky and find a $10 bill in the parking lot? And yet somehow she’ll come home fully satiated.

Yesterday, as I was ready to drive my car to the train station to pick up Super Hubs, she warned me that the gas level in the car was "a little low.” She’d been the only one driving it for the past two days. “But you should have enough gas to get to the train station,” she reassured me. Should have enough to get to the train station?? I turned on the ignition. The gas gauge read “Empty.” It kept flashing E! E! E! I wondered what exactly that meant. Did that mean “Completely Empty?” Or “Sort of Empty?” Or “Just Think About Getting Gas Sometime In The Next Week??”

I nervously pulled out of the driveway. The nearest gas station was two miles away. Did I have at least two miles worth of gas? I had no idea. It was a new car, and I had never let the gas tank get below 1/4 of a tank. I cautiously drove down the street, one eye glued to the gauge, my mind thinking of all the ways I would punish my daughter. E! E! E!

I drove slow-ish-ly, scanning my brain to think of what I’d read about gas and cars. If you drive slowly, it conserved gas, right? Or should I drive very fast, thus getting it to the gas station before the car realized the gas was gone and stopped completely? Should I turn on the radio to distract the car from its low-fuel issue? Turn up the heat to warm it into submission? I mentally berated myself for not paying attention to most of the car/gas information Super Hubs told me. I’d found car/gas information boring. And where had it gotten me? In a car, about to run out of gas, and having no idea what to do!! My pulse raced and my palms became sweaty.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I headed down the highway and prayed. “Please oh please, Dear God, don’t let me run out of gas!” E! E! E! I played classical music to soothe myself and the car, and continued to pray. “You, the God who could part the seas for Moses can surely get this car to the gas station on Empty!” And I continued driving toward the gas station, praying and hoping and encouraging the car with sweet talk. E! E! E! The two mile drive seemed to take forever, and I was a nervous wreck the whole way. It was dark and cold and drizzly, and I SO did not want to run out of gas.

But I pulled into Amoco 10 minutes later, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. We’d made it! The car and I. I drove up to a pump and gave myself a moment of solitude. I breathed deeply, letting my pulse return to normal. I felt more deeply bonded to this car, having survived a harrowing adventure together. And I called my daughter and told her I’d made it to the gas station. “I knew you had enough gas to get there!” she said.