Tags
car, character, Christ, circumstance, driving, gas station, God, life, patience
A few months ago, the gas tank quit working properly on my car. At the gas station, when I set the little helper-notch contraption inside the pump handle so that the pump would self-fill and I could conveniently put my gloved hands into my pockets so they wouldn’t freeze off, the notch began to unhook after the fuel counter had only climbed to one or two dollars. I don’t usually pull into the gas station if I only need one or two dollars worth of gas, which, at this point, would hardly get me down the block, I reckon. And so began the pattern of re-setting the helper-notch, politely asking the gas pump to self-fill on behalf of my desire to retain these frozen little fingers of mine and, consequently, the gas pump’s denial of my requests.
You see, I also don’t like to touch the handle with my winterized hands in case the handle smells like gas because I’m not interested in my gloves smelling like that. Whenever I wash my gloves, I never remember to bring my gloves back to the car. The gas smell is such a lingering smell. It’s fine in the summer because I can wash my hands and the smell is mostly gone, and I usually don’t have as much difficulty remembering to bring those back to the car.
When I bring my car into the shop, I never ask about my obsessive refuse-to-fill-itself gas tank because I’m not interested in paying for whatever the problem might be. Because, frankly, it’s not actually a problem. Just a bit of an…inconvenience. All it really requires is standing and manually holding the handle until the entire tank fills to “F”. And, although slightly absurd, it’s not negatively affecting my life. Not if we’re talking “big picture” here. Maybe just increasing my capacity for patience. And who, namely me, couldn’t use a touch more patience cultivated into her hasty, assuming character?
More and more like Christ, but not all in one day. Not all today.