Cheap But Not Stupid

The car wouldn't start because the battery was drained. (I was in the City, 30 miles from home, so solutions were limited.) I called AAA, and the tow truck came in less than an hour. The driver took less than a minute to jump-start the engine and five more minutes to fill out the paperwork. I was soon on my way.

For most of the 38 years that I've been with triple-A I mainly used the membership to get free street maps. Now that paper maps are obsolete, I had briefly considered canceling the membership, but common sense prevailed. A person whose cars average 15 years of age needs to have a roadside assistance plan. It's okay to be cheap (see reference to 15-year-old cars in previous sentence) but not stupidly so.

Raising the hood not only signals the tow truck but invites birds to perch.