Heh.
Funny story, that.
A couple of weeks ago, when all of the uproar about random acceleration in Toyotas was splashed throughout the news, Tom and I had the following conversation:
Tom (judgy and irritated tone of voice): I don't know why these morons whose cars accelerated out of control didn't just shift them into neutral.
Me (making list of pretty, pretty flowers I plan to put in my garden this spring): Hmm?
Tom: Well, instead of crashing, they could have just shifted into neutral and braked to stop the car.
Me (ooh, don't want to forget snapdragons!): Uhh, I dunno. Maybe they were panicking?
Tom: Still. Everyone knows that taking the car out of gear will stop the acceleration.
Me: (what's the name of those spiky purple flowers I had last year?): Right.
To my (very slight) credit, I did remember this conversation while I was trying to unstick the accelerator pedal. Problem was, I couldn't remember if he had said "shift into neutral" or "shift into park." I was leaning toward "park." Which I think we can all agree, probably wouldn't have ended well.
Once I made it to the stores that day and finally reached Tom on the phone, he first made sure I was safe. Then he launched into an endless lecture about what to do next time, why to do it, and oh, I don't know, how an internal combustion engine works? I admit to partially tuning him out once he'd moved on to sentences using words like "spark plugs", "combustion", and "rpms."
My brain reacts to car talk in much the same way it reacts to football. It shuts off. Then it makes its way to a happy place. In this particular case, that happy place was the candy aisle in Target.
Unrelated: Finally! A new look for my blog! What do you think?
8 comments:
Love the new look!
I like the new look!
You're right - shifting into "park" would NOT have resulted in a pleasant outcome. Thank God you didn't do that!
Keep telling yourself, "Neutral is good. Can't go wrong with neutral." :)
I know the last thing you want is more technical knowledge, but for what it's worth, it won't let you shift into park at speeds greater than 5 miles per hour - try it and you'll see it is blocked. If it did, your transmission would surely break.
Love the new look!
I would *never* have thought about putting the car in neutral.
Love this posting--I do the same thing when my husband talks about his job/computers/sports.
And I love the new look! Gorgeous.
I love the new look, too. And I've already had my say about the whole "neutral" issue, right?
This is EXACTLY the kind of thing that would happen to me. And since I drive a Sienna, my new mantra is going to be "Neutral is the new black; neutral is the new black."
I'm sitting here giggling, because I swear to goodness I do the exact same thing! When he gets that lectury tone in his voice, I immediately go to my happy place, which like you, consists of pretty, pretty flowers.
Love your new look! You've nudged me to do something with mine when I get home.
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