Friday, February 1, 2013

a mistake on the calendar and a call to the fire department

So the first month of 2013 went out with a Bang.

Quite literally.  It was a Thursday Night and I was rushing myself to Desert Ridge Shopping center in North Phoenix to meet a fellow Scouter.  I was enjoying weird self, listening to Talk Radio KTAR talk about the craziness of a lunatic who shot 3 people in Phoenix earlier in the week.  I swerved to narrowly miss a piece of re-bar I saw in the road.  Life was going completely normal.

I turn into the shopping center and suddenly my car gets super rough and stalls out.  "WTF!" I say to myself as a stare helplessly at the dashboard.  I ferociously turn the ignition trying to get my precious Jetta out of the way of incoming traffic as I block the entire driveway at rush hour.  Lots of swear words are now rushing to my mind as I start to panic, "Oh, no, I am going to get hit!"  Then the smell hits me, the awful, and frightening odor of gasoline.  The engine turns, I make it another 30ft and block an entire lane of traffic.

Great! Now what do I do?  Besides swear alot?  I got out for a brief moment and see the front of my car has fuel pouring onto the ground.  I am all alone.  I mean there are hundreds of passerby's every minute, but no one stops.  I am all alone, I call my husband, first time he has answered the phone in months.  He says call  triple A.  Unfortunately, we are too broke to actually afford triple A, it was cancelled.

I call my friend to see if maybe he can help me move the car out of the way of incoming traffic.  "What?!! Our car pool date to Mesa is next Thurday!"  Crap, all alone again.  I reached in my glove box.  I called my auto insurance company's road side service.  She says I am NOT covered.  Bummer.  She asks again what fluid is leaking from my car.  "Gasoline", I say again.

This flips some panic switch on her end.  She tells me she needs to call 9-1-1 to make sure everything is safe.  Now I am embarrassed.  I begin to blush and she pulls the Phoenix Dispatch Center on the line.  I reluctantly tell them where I am, after all safety is important, right?

Farmers transferred me to a claims adjuster because they begin to think the same thing I do, maybe I did not miss that re-bar after all.  Grr...  I call my husband.  He comes to my rescue, and drives me home.  The Farmers company sends a tow and we all go to sleep kinda.


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