A few years ago my husband and I were travelling home from college for the weekend. We were in a bit of a hurry and set our cruise control to 80 (five miles over the speed limit). Unfortunately, we ended up getting caught in the middle of a heavy rain downpour. As my husband declined our speed, we hydroplaned across four freeway lanes and landed off the road.

After taking a few deep breaths and marveling that we had just hydroplaned across the whole freeway without incurring any accident or bodily injury, we got out and inspected the car. Miraculously, the only damage we needed to repair was the exterior side mirror on the passenger side of the car. That appendage had hit a reflector bar on the road and the mirror had broken out completely.

My husband is extremely persistent; he also hates car trouble!  To my dismay, he decided the car needed to be fixed that day.

At that time we were driving an Audi. This usually meant any parts we needed for the car had to be special ordered through the dealership from Germany. I tried to relay this information to my husband, but he was convinced he could get the car fixed that day….and he was not going to listen to my logic.

Amidst my anger, my husband proceeded to stop at the next Napa Auto Parts along the way. Of course, we didn’t find anything. And my husband was very discouraged to find that the Napa Auto Parts of Fillmore, UT didn’t have Audi parts (DUH).

My husband’s fix-it-now escapade added about 45 minutes to our trip. This isn’t a large amount of time but I was mad that he wasted any time by somehow believing we could find the right part for his German car in a very small Utah town.   

This story perfectly demonstrates the behavior my husband demonstrates when car trouble arises. He becomes illogical and much too persistent.

I’ve always been a bit irritated about my husband’s freaky car persistence. Any time his car is making any sound whatsoever, he freaks out. And anytime the road is bumpy and causing a rough ride, he freaks out. He often pulls over to make sure everything is okay. It’s akin to a mini meltdown.

We recently went on a vacation and drove…..every few hours we had a minor incident in which I was grilled about sounds I couldn’t hear. After this happens a few times it gets really annoying! Toward the end of the drive—after we’d checked the tire pressure a thousand times and heard even more “suspicious” noises—I wished we’d just flown.

 I’m sure my point here is pretty clear. In my opinion, husbands all have an inner freak appear when certain things happen. Car trouble just happens to belong to my husband.

Today, however, I have to be very grateful for my husband’s inner freak. Because sometimes—not often—but sometimes, his meltdown episodes come in handy.

Over the weekend we celebrated my sister-in-law’s birthday. The girls were going up to Park City to shop at the outlets and the guys were leaving a couple hours later to meet us up there for dinner. Because of this my husband and I had separate cars.

Upon returning home, I had to get gas. I told my husband to take our little boy in his car and I’d follow shortly after.

I proceeded to the gas station, filled my car, and looked forward to meeting my husband and son at home. But when I went to re-start my car                                  ……yeah….nothing!

NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING

No radio, no sounds, no lights, no NOTHING

Now who was freaking out? Yeah—me!

The first thing I thought is I must have done something wrong. I made sure the car was in park and then I made sure I hadn’t somehow clicked on an anti-theft device I didn’t know about. When it became clear this wasn’t actually my fault, the reality of having a dead car sunk in.

My car is NOT old; it’s less than four years old, in fact. And it has had all of its recommended servicing. I was quite shocked to be in this situation.  

I called my husband and told him my car was dead but that I could get a jump at the gas station. My car fired right up after being jumped and I have never been so happy to hear the sound of the motor turning on!

On my way home, however, I started hearing strange noises coming from the front end of my car. This was unsettling to say the least. When the car is perfectly fine and my husband tries to find things wrong, it makes me mad. When the car is obviously not fine and suspicious noises start to occur, it freaks me out.

I wasn’t sure if I was hearing things or if the noises were legitimate, so I made my husband go on a ride with me. There was a definite ticking noise, but we weren’t sure if it was actually strange or if we were both just freaked out. In the end, my husband decided the car sounded normal. He did note, however, that my headlights were flickering….now that’s reassuring.

These words are not fun to hear: “Your car isn’t making funny noises, honey, but your headlights are flickering. I hope we don’t run out of power and break down on the freeway.”

Anyway, we drove around for a little while longer and decided the only thing that was probably wrong was something with the battery. Sure enough, when we got home and turned off the engine it wouldn’t restart.

The sinking feeling in my stomach was not pleasant.

At this point it was close to 9:00 PM and I had little hope that we’d be able to get anything done for my car. My husband had a movie he needed to leave for at 10, and no mechanic is open that late. Somehow my husband found a store that was open (there’s that persistence thing again) and he told me he’d get everything checked out if we could get my car to start again.

For the second time that night my car responded to jumper cables and hour later I had a new battery.

My husband is seriously weird about car issues. In this case it paid off! He had my car taken care of within two hours of the incident’s beginning.

This experience revealed to me that car trouble can happen quite unexpectedly. I had absolutely no warning or previous car trouble. This was my very first emergency experience since I bought my car. And even though my episode turned out to be quite mild, it wasn’t fun!

The one thing I’m most proud of after going through this experience is I didn’t panic. I was silently freaking out, but my outer appearance remained calm and collected through the entire ordeal. Also, my husband and I didn’t argue once (which is rare for us in high stress situations). Not panicking really helped us in the end! We solved the problem and worked together.

Some things to consider:

Make sure you always keep a set of jumper cables in your car! You never know when you’ll need them. I’ve used them twice in the last ten years, but that number is higher than zero times!

Make sure you have a form of communication with you at all times! Even if you only have change for a pay phone or a pre-paid phone card, you’ll be better off than having nothing. A cell phone is ideal. Services like AAA and OnStar are also very valuable in these types of instances.