A little tale on this chilly morning entitled:
Mother Knows Best
The car coughed and sputtered then finally
issued its last dying breath. Silence.
Mary looked at the gauges on the dash hoping to
see something she had missed but the flashing red lights had died along with
the car.
She turned the key again hoping for something,
anything, but received only the grinding of the ignition as it searched for
fuel.
The car was out of gas.
Mary searched the roadway for a sign of another
car, for headlights cutting through the blinding snow but could see nothing but
blackness.
She had decided to take the back way home from
her mother’s house, it was about four miles shorter and much less traffic than
the interstate, a fact that seemed like a good thing four hours ago.
When she left New London for Boston this morning
she thought she was quite prepared for the trip back home. One night with her
know-it-all mom was all she could bear and besides she wanted to be home for
Halloween. She had forgotten to
plug her cell in before she went to bed but it was still about fifty percent in
the green so she figured that she could make the two and a half hour trip home without a
problem.
She also hadn’t stopped to fill the car before
she left as she planned on filling up at one of the cheaper stations that she
could hit once she crossed the state line back into Massachusetts.
She thought she was ready for everything but the one thing Mary hadn’t prepared was the weather.
What was it exactly that her had mother said to
her while they were having breakfast?
“Nor’easters are unpredictable, Mary. You should
stay.”
“It doesn’t snow in October and certainly not on
Halloween,” she had snapped back at her mother.
Mary hadn’t listened to her mother’s warning and
as it turned out, she had been wrong on both counts. The storm arrived hours
earlier than predicted and after she had to slow to a crawl because she couldn’t
see in the driving snow, and eventually had to stop driving altogether, she
found herself stranded still miles from home with no cell service and no gas in
the midst of a killer Nor’easter.
“The Perfect Storm,” she had heard someone call
it on the radio just before the car died. It didn’t seem perfect to her at all.
Soon the temperature inside the automobile would
drop and she, would die right along with her car.
Why hadn’t she filled the car? Charged her
phone?
She was sleepy. At least sleep was predictable.
Like waking up. And dying.
She curled herself up into a ball and closed her
eyes.
At least she wouldn't have to hear "I told
you so."
