I'm sooooooo smart.

I am embarrassed to admit it, but I ran out of gas yesterday. Genius.

I ran out of gas once a long time ago. My friend, Jen, and I were in the car on the way to Maine (from Massachusetts) and we ran out of gas on the Maine Turnpike in the middle of nowhere. I say "we" ran out of gas, but it was completely me. I was driving, and it was my mother's car. Jen was an innocent bystander. My mother had reminded me about 30 times to fill up the car... I had gone to fill up the car that morning. But the thing was when I went to the gas station, I was driving MY car. When I went to Maine later on, I was driving MY MOM'S car. Funny how that didn't quite work right. When it happened, I said, "HOW CAN I BE OUT OF GAS!?!? I FILLED UP THE CAR BEFORE WE LEFT!!! WHAT THE??"

Then came the "Oh wait.... Oh... umm... yeah......... I see......."

Dumb!

The thing was, we were really far away from anything. We didn't know what to do. We couldn't walk to get gas. We hadn't seen another car for a very long time. We had a cell phone, but we didn't know who to call, because we didn't really know quite where we were. Who do you call when you are somewhere in Maine and need gasoline? Oh yeah, we also didn't know how to use the phone. It was a long time ago and it was before everyone had a cell phone. This was one of those big black heavy things from sometime around the bronze age that we had borrowed from my mom.

We decided we would call Jen's mother. She couldn't really help, but she might know where we should call for help (nope, didn't have AAA). Also, we knew Jen's mom's phone number, so that was a big check in the plus column. And we certainly could not call my mother. Not after she reminded me 30 times to fill up the car. So we were on the side of the highway trying to figure out how to operate the phone when the Maine State Highway something-or-other guy came along in his truck with yellow lights and sold us 2 gallons of gas for about $30. Literally Highway Robbery. But whatever, what the fuck else were we going to do? And I was just glad my mom didn't have to find out i was such an idiot.

So you would think after this happened, I would have learned my lesson. Never. Run. Out. Of. Gas. Again. EVER.

Well, you would think. I thought so too. But I left work to drive home last night, and about 100 feet after I pulled out of the parking lot, my car suddenly lurched and made a weird noise, then slowed down a lot and things just locked up. I thought my car was dead. It was like she just took a shit in the middle of the road. But then i realized what was going on. No gas. Liz! You Idiot! But thank goodness there was a gas station right there. I lucked out big time. I coasted down the street and turned into the gas station (no power steering, scared a guy in a FedEx truck who thought i was going to hit him, couldn't really slow down because I didn't want to stop till I was at a pump, it was pretty bad). I managed to somehow steer the car to a gas pump and it came to a stop by itself. If it had coasted to a stop 2 feet earlier, the hose wouldn't have reached. Whew! Talk about luck!

I decided I love my car even more than I already did. There were so many ways that situation could have sucked SO MUCH more.

How could I possibly have let this happen? I mean, the car has a little meter to tell me how much gas I have. It also has a tiny little orange dot that lights up when i am low on gas. I also set my "tripometer" or whatever it's called back to 0 every time I fill up, so I can see how many miles i've gone and know when I need to fill up. So I really could not have been better warned that I was going to run out of gas. This information was right in front of my face. But I have a gigantic gas tank. I only have to fill up the car once every month or month and a half. So I tend to forget about it. But mainly, I am DUMB.