Getting Jumped

You know how senior year of high school people get voted “Most Popular” or “Most Likely to Succeed”?  Well, I was voted “Worst Driver”…yup.  Needless to say, both high school and driving are not strong suits in my life.  I did not realize that this titile extended to “Girl With Worst Car Luck Ever.”

I recently had my lovely Car Car (creatively named by Anna Thvedt), a light blue 2000 Ford Taurus, towed (thank you AAA Premium!) to Mankato, MN where my parents’ friend will be taking it apart and fixing probably everything on it.  In the meantime, I am driving a maroon 1994 Buick LeSabre named Esmerelda by my thirteen year-old sister, Charlotte.  So far I have really enjoyed the vehicle.  It drives much more smoothly and quietly plus it has a tape player.  I need to find my old “Grease” and Britney Spears tapes…


So what do I do?  I manage to not shut my door all the way and my battery dies.  This is at 7pm when I am supposed to be on my way to meet Kristin, my coworker, at Coffea.  I am parked across the street from Sullivan, so I gave Campus Security a call.  The guy was very friendly, but a little too excited to have someone to talk to.  I explained my problem and his first response was, “Do you have two feet?”  “Yes…”  “Well, start walking!”  I kind of stuttered awkwardly and explained that gettting back to campus was not the problem, I could obviously manage the 100 feet trek back to my dorms, however I needed my car to work.  He started laughing and told me to lighten up.


My Knight in a Shining USF Truck showed up a few minutes later.  He told me how glad he was that my car needed to be jumped because he had been doing paperwork for the last six hours.  I am thankful my inconvenience was a blessing for someone.  :) He brought out a liability form and asked me to sign it in case my car should blow up.  I am the most gullible person ever and I was already nervous so this did not make me feel much better.  Unfortunately the jump chord was too short to reach both whatever thingys they are supposed to connect to.  So he had to call in reinforcement.


In the meantime, he took it upon himself to show me the proper way to shut a car door so as to not leave the lights on and kill your battery.  He thought it was hilarious.  I gave him the courtesy of a convincing fake laugh.


When Hero #2 made it over, they manuevered Knight’s truck to try to make the chord reach.  The next task was to find something metal to ground it or something.  Let me tell you, cars are made out of plastic these days, no more metal.


Finally we were able to get my car jump-started.  I thanked Knight and Hero #2 and was on my merry way to Coffea.  When I arrived, I made sure my door was fully shut and that the lights were off.