It was one of the coldest weeks of winter. It had been all over the news, and schools had been cancelled or delayed all week to protect children from the snow and cold. However, the freezing weather wasn’t only pummeling our town by a lake. Cold fronts were sweeping in all around the country, and people were making jokes about it in the wake of a popular Disney movie.
Normally, the cold and snow wouldn’t have been a problem for our family. We had a snug home and plenty of ways to keep warm. Unfortunately, we also had a poor parking situation. Due to the amount of snow we receive each winter, our city puts in place a winter parking ban each year. This means no cars are allowed to be parked on city streets overnight. Cars that are found on the street are heavily fined or towed.
The winter parking ban is an inconvenience to our family. We have a driveway big enough for one car. Our second car is normally parked on the road outside our home. During the parking ban, I need to take this second car and drive it onto our narrow strip of lawn that rises at a slope from the road. Unfortunately for me this winter night, as I went about to move our car onto our lawn to comply with the ban, I realized our car’s battery was dead.
It was strange. My car’s battery was dead, but I really didn’t need to go anywhere. I just needed to turn our car and drive a few feet up onto our lawn. But those few feet might as well have been fifty miles. When I called our insurance to get a tow truck to jump the car, I was endlessly on hold.
I later learned the cold weather throughout the country swamped our insurance companies call center that night. For my inconvenience, they eventually sent me a fifty dollar check. But that check meant nothing that frozen night. Instead, all I could think about was getting my car off the road before it got ticketed or towed. Thankfully, I was able to call a friend. He drove over, gave my car a jump, and I moved it onto my lawn. All was well.
The dead battery wasn’t a lot of fun. It was incredibly frustrating to literally see where you needed to move your car and be unable to do so. Standing in that frozen road hoping to avoid the police enforcing our winter parking ban, I wished my car’s battery had been stronger and able to hold up that frigid night. It was a stressful situation.
However, I was grateful that my friend came to my recuse, and I eventually used the insurance check to buy us both pizza. I also upgraded my car’s battery before the end of winter to prevent such an event from happening again.