Gasoline or water--

Common sense-- a good sense and sound judgment in practical matters. Adults have this grand theme called common sense--I do not.

The worst feeling in the world is getting into your car and your gas gauge says empty. This happens to me on a way too often basis.

Someone with practical reason knows when the arrow is under that little yellow E, and your car starts dinging at you like a bomb is about to go off under your butt. You are in deep do-do. Someone without a sense of being an adult thinks that it will be okay and that it is only a few more miles. No matter how much it is sleeting and how dumb it is to think so. I am the latter.

pic credit: YourMechanic

Gasoline is expensive and I was running late to class that morning with no good reason. That day about 4 months ago I made a bad decision that cost me hundreds of dollars. This is what happened.

I wake up and open my eyes, it is just like any other day. I get ready and I’m late who knows why

I’m late. It really doesn’t matter but I got into my car, it starts like every other day but my gas gauge is sitting right under the E. I see this and literally what goes through my brain is “whatever” and I shrug it off. It is not whatever I don’t know if it was God or pure luck but I made it to school.

School is out, it is time to leave. I went to my car, said a Prayer, and turned my key. By some miracle, my car started the second time. Me being me, I decided I still had miles to go, and I did. I drove by the first gas station and decided it was too expensive. So like any other broke teenager with only $12 in their pocket, I kept going. I drove a good two miles in the 30-degree weather as it is raining before my car nicely ran out of gasoline. Did I mention it was below freezing? It was.

Hold up you probably think I am dumb at this point-- we haven't even got there yet.

As I sit perched, stranded in my car freezing my left but cheek off contemplating life I go through the list of my contacts that I think can help bail me out of my crappy situation. First I call the guy that dumped me the day before since I'm on a roll of smart ideas. He proceeded to not answer. Then I called the next 5 or 6 people that I thought would be able to help. No one answered. Then I called my last resort, a good friend of mine who just like me never got the common sense gene.

We will call her Brittany since I am pretty sure she wouldn’t like to be associated with this anymore then she has to. At least publicly.

Brittany is a real one, she answered my call and she was right down the street. This is where in the movies there is a commercial or pause for dramatic effect, she showed up and we are literally 2 blocks from the gas station, the one with the good prices, the one I was trying to get to all along.

We don't have a gas can.

Okay, Pause, this is normal, we are out of gas with no gas can push the car right? Wrong, we have a better idea, Brittany remembers this thing her ex told her this one time that “if you put just a little bit of water in your gas tank then it will get you 4 or 5 blocks to a gas station in dire situations. The rest will evaporate.”  Brittany was sure of it, she knew that it would work. This is one of those situations where everything you see on the internet isn't true. But let us keep going We grabbed her liter of water out of her trunk and poured it right into my gas tank.

If you couldn’t guess, it didn't work.

My car didn't start, it didn't do anything. My car just sat still right in front of the McDonalds that I ended up working at a few weeks later.

I then had to explain to my parents what had happened and that they never taught me anything. Also that I am a disappointment that can't even properly put gas in her car. My nice $478 mechanic bill agrees with this statement.  Gas and water though both can be clear and both can be yellow are very different. If cars ran on water, there would be no reason for gas prices and our ozone layer would probably be intact. I should have thought about it or at least googled it.