Mechanical Errors

Okay, here's the thing: I don't like buying gas.

The paying for gas is kind of a bummer, but I'm speaking about actually going to the station and filling my tank. Honestly, who has the time? My sneakers always soak in the green and purple gassy mixture most filling stations are plagued with and I'm always nervous for the following hour or so that my sneakers will spontaneously catch fire and burn me from the ankle up.
Anyway, gas stations blow.
It is because of this general disregard for filling stations that I always run my gas needle deep into "empty".
So okay, so remember that my gas tank is extremely empty.

Also, was anyone else aware that parking your car on an uphill slope is bad? I never knew this. But apparently the gasoline is sloshing around in the tank. And like getting down to the end of a Slurpee that the spoon-straw just won't suck up, my car couldn't inject what little fuel was left in my tank because the hill sloshed the gas to the opposite side as the little gasoline straw.*
I was stuck. My car wouldn't start. It was night. I was scared.

I'm not a particularly bright human being. When the television flickers, I punch the side of it as hard as I can and assume that'll do the trick. Most of the time it doesn not do the trick and I end up driving to Wal-Mart a half-hour later to buy a new television. But the scant number of times it does work, well, then my friends, on those occasions you can find me beating my chest and refering to myself as Captain Awesome for the rest of the afternoon.
And like my brutal handywork I perform on past television sets, I set forth with the same methodology with my atrophied automobile. I just turned the ignition switch over and over and over.
And when that didn't work, I turned the ignition switch over and over a few more times, just in case I had gotten stronger in the past minute or so and brute strength was all the engine needed.
Nothing doing.

It seemed like all my car might need was a little gas, I quickly waltzed over to a gas station just steps away from my apartment in hopes of finding a gallon gas can. I couldn't find one and the cashier behind the counter had apparently never heard of such a thing. I was going to have to call a mechanic, which was going to cost me money so I used the ATM in the convenient mart.
Taking out $40, the machine spit out one twenty dollar bill... and that was it.
I went back to the cashier who looked absolutely shocked that I was still in his establishment. Apparently, people asking for gas cans are schitzophrenic and schitzophrenics must not hang around convenient marts for more than one go-'round with the cashier.
I'm no one's normal schitzo though.
I complained about the ATM ripping me off. He said he couldn't do anything about it. He shrugged and I stood there for a moment wondering when Ashton Kutcher was going to come out and admit that he was Punking me. Drunkened with frustration I started to leave the convenient mart, but turned back to the cashier and asked once again, "you haven't gotten in any gas can shipments in the last three minutes have you?"
Unblinkingly and sincerely, he replied, "No."
I looked for a phone number on the ATM machine that I could call for assistance. It was in looking for this number that I found my second twenty dollar bill stuck near the back of the ATM like a pack of Doritoes stuck in the spokes of a vending machine. I grabbed it and held it above my head like I had just won a stuffed toy at the carnival.
I left the gas station, headed back to my broken car and I called a mechanic.
And then the fun began.

In waiting for the mechanic I decided first to try my car seven or eight more times. I dunno why I did this exactly, probably because I wasn't creative enough to think of any better solution. When the car remained dead, I sat on the stoop of my apartment... waiting.
Alongside me on the stoop were several empty water cooler jugs. The thought crossed my mind to steal one, fill it with gasoline and put it in my car. But anyone who knows me, knows that this surely would have caused my sneakers to catch on fire and somehow, it would have landed me in jail.
As fate would have it, I gave up jailtime for Ramadan this year and really wanted to try to stick with that.**

So there I sat on the stoop until the tow truck showed up. I pointed him to my car and started it so that he could hear what the problem was. He told me that my battery was dying. I told him that it was fine earlier and that I thought I just needed to put gasoline in it. He wrinkled his nose.
"Well, I'm out here it's gonna cost you 45 bucks no matter what, I might as well recharge your battery. But you're parked on a hill and it ain't gonna start without puttin' gas in it."
It was important that I remained cordial with this guy because he was my only hope. So I remained calm. "Yeah I know. I really just need a gas can. Do you have a gas can in your truck?"
Without moving his feet, the mechanic turned his waist and glanced ten feet behind him into the bed of his tow truck. From where I was standing I could see wrenches, an industrial car lever, two spare tires, various engine oils, a Pac-Man arcade game, Dorothy's ruby slippers, several bowling balls and a ferret.
"Naw man, I ain't got a gas can."
"Well I'll tell you what...", that's how I started my haggling approach. I don't really know how to haggle, but I really liked Ocean's Eleven and figured I could fake it. "Instead of you towing me, can't you just take me somewhere they sell gas cans?"
"You want me to just drive around from gas station to gas station?" he asked a fair question. So I gave him whatever answer I could think of:
"Oh, I thought you might know a nearby gas station that sold gas cans."
"Naw man, I don't know where they sell gas cans."
At this point I began wondering if I had imagined the existence of gas cans. I thought I had seen one before, but maybe not. No one in Massachusetts seemed to have any clue what a gas can is, maybe I just created it in my mind like Jimmy Stewart and that 10-foot rabbit.

Meanwhile, while I was doing an awesome job at haggling, a row of cars were impatiently waiting behind the roadblock that had become my car and the tow truck. No one was audibally upset until a damn firetruck pulled down the road and honked several loud, emergency honks. I was going to type that I had never seen a firetruck drive down my little residental road in almost two years of living here, but as I began writing this paragraph, wouldn't you know that another damn firetruck roared down the road?
Go figure.

Eventually my car became hooked on the truck and he pulled me the 200 yards from my parking spot to the gas station I was at thirty minutes earlier. The mechanic set the car down near the gas tank. As he was rooting around his truck looking for jumper cables, he told me that he'll wait for me to fill up my tank before he jumped my car.
Great.
Except that he dropped my car directly in the middle of two gas tanks. So there I was like Buster Keaton yanking one gas pump as far as it would reach only to come up short, moving to the second gas pump and falling equally short.
Six minutes later after I told the mechanic what was wrong, and after he reloaded my car onto his tow, moved me three feet forward, and set me back down, I filled the tank.
The car started once the tank was full; the straw once again reaching the gas.

He jumped my car and the battery was back to full life. The night was finally looking up (kinda, although I still hadn't eaten dinner and I tend to be cranky when I go too long without dinner).
$45 to fill my gas tank.
$45 for a tow truck to visit my car.
an extra $20 if the truck tows me (even if it's 200 yards away from it's point of origin).
Total cost = $110

But it was the next $6.48 that really stung.

The mechanic is winding his jumper cables around his forearm and I hand him the four twenty dollar bills I got from my pocket (and from the ATM). He looked at the money in my hand and gave me a "you're not gonna believe this"-style smile.
"You don't have change do you?" I asked.
"Naw man. I ain't got change."
I took a step back, beause if Ashton Kutcher came running out from behind the convenient mart with his camera crew, I wanted to make sure I had enough room to jump-kick him in his teeth.
The mechanic took a half-step toward me and said, "I'll tell you what, man. Instead of paying for the tow. How 'bout you give me the $45 for coming out and the extra $35 you got in your hand and I can hook you up with a real nice watch."

I hate Ashton Kutcher.
Words were unable to escape my mouth. Thoughts aimlessly stood around in my head without much direction.
"It's a real nice watch, man. It's worth $150, $175 - something."
The only thought that made any sense at the time to say was, "I'm single, man. I got no one to give a watch to."
He tells me, "It's a man's watch."
I could only raise my watch-wrapped wrist and say, "I'd rather just pay for the tow, man. Thanks."

What the hell did I just thank him for?

It seemed smarter to break my twenty by buying something in the minimart. I head back into the gas station and grab a Gatorade, the whole time keeping an eye on my car and half-assuming that the mechanic was gonna take off with it. Standing in line wondering what the reaction of the attendent would be this third time around, I had a sudden hankering for a SlimJim.
I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I do love my SlimJims.
The Gatorade and SlimJims came out to $6.48 and if you're doing the math in your head you'd realize that, after handing him, $20 that my change was now $13.52.
I didn't get a five dollar bill back, which was all that I needed.
Sonuvabitch.
I grab a Snickers and re-enter the mini-mart line.
Upon reaching the head of the line and the convenient store cashier for the fourth time that night, I was convinced that he thought I was there to murder him. I smiled at him and it seemingly offered no comfort.
With five dollar bill in hand, I returned to the mechanic who was nearing the end of his cigarette. He seemed perfectly pleasant, perhaps waiting for a tip.
I gave him no tip.

Almost an hour and fifteen minutes after going to my car in the first place and never having gone more than 200 yards away from my home during that time, I headed back down my street.

And wouldn't you know it, my parking space was gone.

On a completely unrelated note, I am now training to become a ninja. I plan to begin my kill-crazy rampage sometime shortly after Labor Day.
Have a lovely afternoon.

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* I don't know if gasoline tanks have "gasoline straws". Point-of-fact, I know very little about cars in general, one of the reasons I found myself in the predicament I was in.

** Alright, I'll come clean, I don't know when Ramadan is, nor am I aware whether or not Ramadan's constituents are expected to give anything up in honor of it.