Wednesday, October 8, 2014

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished...

Let me tell you a little bit about my upbringing. My mom had the worst habit of running out of gas. My brothers and I learned to wear shoes every time we went out because the chances were good that we'd be walking back. Most people wear shoes anyway, but that's beside the point. It came to the point that I never worried about running out of gas because it was pretty much a given: if we were in the car, we'd soon be walking though my mom had a knack for making it fun..ish.

As an adult I've run out of gas once, yet my oldest was constantly worried it would happen. When it finally did we were half a mile from home, and a gas station, had a gas can in the back, and a daddy four minutes away. Also, there was a dude outside mowing his lawn, and he gave us the tablespoon of gas we needed to get around the corner. We never had it that good as kids.

Anyway, I was heading to a friends house a month back when I had a flashback to my childhood as I passed a van stopped on the shoulder. I flipped a u-y and headed back around. Eight children with no shoes (amateurs) spilled out of the van which had run out of gas. They'd been on the side of the road for ten minutes, and the mom had just decided to gather her chick and walk to the nearest gas station (five miles up the road) when I showed up. I loaded the van with offspring (one was an infant-there was no car seat) and took the kids home where we also picked up a gas can.

We left the kids in the car of the oldest boy and went to fill the gas can. At the gas station I offered to fill the three gallon can as it was clear they were low on funds, and I'm glad I did because that gas can had a faulty cap which I found out after we reached her van.

I started to smell gas as we neared her van, and when I opened my trunk to get the gas, I found that the can had tipped over. This shouldn't have been a problem as the cap should have kept the contents inside of the can, but it didn't so most of the gas spilled into the back of my van.

It was awesome.

Thankfully there was enough left that she could get her van to the gas station, but I was out of luck. I scrubbed the back with soap and water, covered it in baking soda, vacuumed it out and tried kitty litter, pulled out the foam under the carpet, scrubbed with soap and water again, tried Fabreeze, left the windows rolled down...My last option was to pull out the carpet, but that's a level of white trash I never want to revisit.

All hope was abandoned as I had just about made my peace with my new gasoline perfume when a friend showed up with an ozone machine. This machine is used to remove the smell of smoke and pets from a house. Wouldn't you know, it removed the smell of gasoline, too!

Every once in a while I still catch a whiff of gas, but I think it might be because the smell is burned into my olfactory.

Or maybe it's just there as a reminder to never help anyone ever again.

Just kidding...mostly.

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