Some mornings there is a lot to do and you end up running late. Other mornings, things flow and you end up a few minutes early. On a day like that last week, feeling a bit ahead of the game, I decided to get gas.
I meandered through the neighborhood streets and pulled up to the pump at my local gas station. This is Oregon, one of the last places on the planet where people are not allowed to pump their own gas, so I sat on my car, looking through my rearview mirror, as the attendant recycled some cardboard before walking towards my car.
“It’s on the other side,” he called to me as he neared the car.
I blushed, though no one could see me, and apologized. “There’s an arrow telling me which side and I just totally forgot!”
“It’s early,” he said, reassuringly.
The funny thing is, just a few days earlier, walking to my car, I had marveled at how much I had learned about my year-and-a-half old new car. I can open doors and start the car without a key. I can use seat warmers and X-mode for icy days. And yet, here I was failing at this most basic task: knowing which side of the car the gas cap hatch was on.
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