Let me tell you, yesterday was a real peach. Everything was going well, no symptoms from the h pylori, we are on the way to go get the girls and then all hell breaks loose. The drive from our house to the twins school is about an hour and twenty minutes. I always try to leave a little early so we have time to stop for gas, traffic and any other problems we might run into. So we left at 1:20 PM and took the trip to go get Happy and Brookie favorite sissy's. When we started our trip I noticed that the gas gauge was about 3/8 of a tank which is all well and good, knowing I would have to stop somewhere along the way. We are approximately a little more than half way there and the car dies on a road that is busy, but no gas station within miles. Funny things is is when the car died the gas gauge read just under a 1/4 of a tank. Mark the time @ 2:22 PM. My first reaction is to yell you have to be kidding me. The second thing I do is call the girl's school to let them know I'm going to be running late and it would be best for them to jump on the bus to daycare. As we watch car after car pass us without even a hint of stopping to see if all is well I attempt to make calls to the people closet to the area to bring some help. An hour passes and yet we have found no one to bring us some fuel. Luckily enough we have the DVD player in the car keeping the kids semi-occupied. Finally at 4:00 PM I'm able to get a hold of both my step-dad and my wife. Both said they would start to head out this way, but we decide to have my step-dad just drive to us, because he is much closer.By this time I'm no longer paying attention to the time, but finally realize that the girls daycare closes at 5:30 PM and I wasn't going to make it over there in time either. So I call the girls mother to ask if she can pick them up, she agrees. My step-dad then arrives with the gas, the most difficult part was dodging on-coming traffic to get into the tank. All is well, right? Not so much. My own stupidity in letting the kids continually watch movies drained the battery so it wouldn't start. Unfortunately for me, my step-dad has no jumper cables with him, so he heads back home to find some. It's after five o'clock now, my wife is on her way to either beat someone else to us and go out to dinner since it's way past making anything at home. Meanwhile when my step-dad makes it back home he gets an ear full from my mom for not taking the kids back with him to their house. My Mom calls me telling me she is on her way to pick up the kids, but they don't have any jumper cables. Which is OK, because my wife is on her way with the cables. My mom arrives and I put the car seats into her van and they get on their way. I called the twins mother to ask her if she can drop the girls off at my mothers so we can waste less time once we were able to get on our way. She agrees. My wife arrives about 6:30 PM and within 5 minutes we have the van started and finally get back on the road to pick up the kids at 6:40 PM.We ate dinner at my Mom's where she bought pizza and some pull-ups for Happy, because he blew up his diaper. The whole fiasco was mostly my fault, partly the car's fault for having a bad gas gauge, but for us to be sitting there from 2:22 PM until 6:40 PM and not have one person stop and see if everything was alright absolutely astonished me. If I see a person who looks in distress or trouble I will stop and make sure if all is OK, I may not be of much help if I don't know what is wrong, but at least checking is the right thing to do. Does my extra effort to help others around me really go that unnoticed. Was it because it was Friday and all any wants to do is get home to their weekends? It was a sad day for me to realize the selfishness of literally the over 500 cars that passed us along the way. The whole incident I took with a grain of salt and was able to laugh at when all was said and done, but that selfishness really cut deep. With that rambling of a story I will also offer my reasons to be grateful.The kids for being stuck in the car for over 3 hours were amazingly well behaved which helped in making the situation much easier to deal with.To my wife, my step-dad and my Mom for all pitching in to help in a situation I could have stopped from happening by stopping for gas earlier.The pizza that we had for dinner and it didn't give my stomach any problems afterwards. Hooray for pizza, I missed you!If you see someone in need of help, please stop and ask. They might not need it, but the gesture in itself is what counts. Not to mention you really may be able to provide an ounce of help that may go many miles away.
