A couple of summers ago I was unloading an obscene amount of groceries when I noticed a thick, pink substance on the garage floor. Lemonade maybe? But it appeared to be coming from inside the car. After I got my dairy and frozen goods out of the sweltering trunk, I dipped my finger into the pink stuff. It didn’t smell like anything and looked about as worrisome as IHOP syrup, which is only dangerous to my thighs.

About an hour later I had to run an urgent errand. (Running low on string cheese, most likely.) Because my husband was out of town, I had another car to drive, one which did not have pink goo oozing out of it. However, I chose to drive the leaky car. It started and drove fine, until the thermometer light came on. I tensed when it started to blink, even though I had no idea what that meant.

If I designed cars, there would be a light that said, Pull Over. And if you didn’t immediately comply, another light would come on that said, NOW! If you still didn’t get the hint, the car would turn itself off. But my car doesn’t have this handy imaginary feature. Despite the warning light, my trip was uneventful. I finished my urgent errand and drove home.

The next afternoon, after loading into my car five children, four snorkels, two masks, a box of crackers, forty-five fruit snacks, a gross of beach towels, and enough juice to flood a small country, the car wouldn’t start. I tried again while the children whined, hot and cranky. Clearly this was another urgent situation so I did what I had to do. I switched cars and went to the pool.

Then I had to make the call. “Do you want to hear the bad news?” I asked my husband.

I told him about the harmless smelling gunk, the flashing red thermometer, and the non-starting car. Luckily I married a man who remains calm in the face of mechanical trouble.

“Was the car leaking while you were driving?”

“No,” I said. “It was in the garage.”

“And the light, when was that flashing?”

Here’s where things started to turn against me. “Oh, well…. see…. I needed to go to the –”

“You drove the car?”

He’s even calm in the face of four-digit repair bills, but he felt bad for the car. I couldn’t feed his panic, but had to reassure him that there was nothing to worry about, just a task to accomplish. “What I need to know is whether I should have the car towed to the dealership or if you think we can put in some more of that pink stuff and drive it over.”

My husband sighed from another state and I heard the hang of his head. “I hope you didn’t seize the engine.”

“No.” I brushed it off. “I think it’s something else – something easy to fix.”

Neither my husband nor the mechanic agreed that it was something ‘easy’ to fix, but it didn’t matter. I may not be good with machines, but things always work out for me. For instance, my new car is very shiny.