sunken garden

Thankfully, unlike Britney I’m not referring to another pregnancy.  I hate to admit it but I am not really helping the feminist movement in defeating the age-old belief about women and cars. 

I’m not a great driver.  Not only do I require utmost silence while I’m driving (read: kids, please no bickering) but I also can’t switch lanes without my heart pounding.   I hesitate a LOT before parallel parking and I will almost always opt to park where there are 2 empty spots next to each other.     I was only 2 points away from failing my driver’s test but at that time I was blaming it on the difference of traffic rules and road conditions in the Philippines and the US. 

I cannot be trusted to maintain a car.  My Toyota Corolla was taken care 0f by all-star mechanic Mang Domeng.   That car has been in two accidents.  One when another vehicle drove towards us as we exited a parking lot.   Another time was when I opted to pick up an earring while in traffic and without putting the hand brakes.  Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!  Now, the only time I check oil and air is when my husband reminds.   Helpless or just lazy? 

But the Britney episode is something that has been haunting my car record since I started driving 7 years ago.  I have a strong tendency of leaving the headlights on and draining the battery in the process.  It has happened about 4 times already and pretty much with every car that I drove.  My trusty old Toyota Corolla, then our Ford Escort and my husband’s Chrysler Pacifica.   On my Corolla, on the 2 times it happened, I was animatedly talking to my future husband that I completely forgot to turn it off.  The other times can be attributed to pure an unadultered inattentiveness.  

Believe me, I have learned how to jumpstart my manual Corolla on my own or sometimes I’m the damsel in distress looking for someone to provide ”pushing labor.”  The worst time was when it happened at night in the middle of an almost empty parking lot and under pouring tropical rainstorm.  I had to call for help (thankfully my cellphone was charged!!) and thankfully my colleague from work had cables to jumpstart the car.  

Over the weekend, my husband was in a business trip in New York.  Usually, I refrain from using his Pacifica because of it’s massive size and my hesistancy to drive an overly automated car (in my poor car lingo this means that the car has too many buttons and special uh-operations).   On a momentary lapse of good judgement, I used it at Sunday night to pick up my stepdaughter from the airport.  Voila! Guess what happened? Yep. I left the fog light on (why was it on in the first place on a clear evening?!?) I managed to drive the car out of the garage in the morning to wash the car and YES, inattentive me didn’t even notice that the lights were still on.   In the afternoon when I was about to drive it back to the garage, all sorts of little icons where lit on the dashboard AND it won’t start!   In these cars, it seems to be a bad sign to have these tiny icons on.   I had to browse through the manual before finally diagnosing that the car’s battery was discharge.  Yes, the battery sign should have been a clue but ABS (Anti-Brake System, I just learned that!) and some other buttons were also on making it even seem more distressful to me.   Thankfully, my neighbors came to my aid and helped me charged the car.  They had a cable.   I didn’t even know if we had one!

So much for breaking old myths about women and cars.