Cheryl Dyson

It's that time of the year when it's just dark enough when I leave the house (at 5:30 a.m.) that headlights are a good idea, but by the time I get to the train station headlights are unnecessary.  I therefore forget to shut them off.  When I got to the train station on Monday afternoon, my car refused to start due to lack of battery power.

Luckily, my ancient POS Toyota Tercel has a manual transmission and push-starting it is a relatively simple matter (and one I've performed about ten million times due to above scenario).  However, the area around the train station is flat as a bloody pancake and I need at least a bit of an incline to get said POS running. 

I gamely got out and started pushing the damned thing up into a nearby driveway that had a miniscule slope to it (thank goodness it's an ancient POS Toyota Tercel because I really can push it by myself fairly easily) when two burly, muscular males hurried over to lend their manly automotive wisdom.  (They are so cute when they do that, aren't they?)

I explained that the car was fine and I just needed a little push to get it started again, so they gave it a heave ho, I popped the clutch and away I went.  I LOVE guys that stop to assist a (sort of) helpless female.  I even saw one on the train this morning and he asked how the car was running.  Cute guy, too.

I've decided my next car can't be any heavier than my Tercel and I will never own an automatic transmission, ever.  Unless I get one of those cars whose lights shut off on their own.  What a concept.