AAA AAA AAA AAA AAA!

I'm a great money-maker for the good folks at AAA. My car has 260,000 miles on it, and it just keeps going and going.

When some people are under stress, they binge on junk food or get snappy with people. I get absent-minded. I forget basic things like where my keys are, etc. Well, between school, work, and work, I've been under a bit of stress lately. As a result, I've been leaving my headlights on frequently. My car is old, so it doesn't turn them off for me. It just leaves them on until the battery dies.

My AAA plan allows for four emergency road assistance calls per year, and any calls above that number cost $65 each. Because of when I originally signed up, my year runs from April 30 to April 29. Behold the following list of times I've used AAA this year:

1) May 2008, Alameda, CA. Jumpstart dead battery caused by me leaving my lights on.
2) September 2008, Sunnyvale, CA. Jumpstart dead battery caused by me leaving my lights on.
3) December 2008, Milpitas, CA. Called AAA to go rescue my sister who had a flat tire on the side of the freeway at midnight. (She didn't have AAA.)
4) February 2009, Milpitas, CA. Jumpstart dead battery caused by me leaving my lights on.
5) March 2009, Mountain View, CA (1 week later). Jumpstart dead battery caused by me leaving my lights on. This is when I first found out about the $65 racket. I was running late to class, so I didn't have much of a choice.
6) March 2009, Mountain View, CA (2 weeks later). Guess what! The battery again. I was determined not to pay again, so I called my sister who had the week off, and I asked her to come and give me a jump start. (She owed me one after the flat tire at midnight...) She came up and we weren't able to jump start the car. (I have really wimpy jumper cables.) I resigned myself to having to cough up more money when she got the bright idea to call using her AAA card. (She signed up after the flat tire incident.) So, we did, and this one was free because it counted against her 4 calls for the year.
7) March 2009, Fremont, CA. (3 days later). My battery was dead again, but I didn't leave my lights on. I had just replaced the battery in between incidents 4 and 5, so I was surprised by this development. My roommate and I tried to get it jump started, but once again, thanks to my wimpy jumper cables, it didn't work. I called AAA, figuring that I would need to get towed to the auto shop. Somehow, the tow truck driver was able to jump start my car. I drove to the auto shop and crossed my fingers that it wouldn't be an expensive problem. It turns out that my battery terminals were bad, so they replaced them. It took 30 minutes and cost me $60. Not too bad, since I was expecting it to be the alternator or the starter.
8) April 21, 2009, Sunnyvale, CA. I've been extra careful about turning my lights off. I even bought a portable jump-starter to keep in my trunk. There's no way I'm going to be putting any more money in the hands of AAA for something as careless as leaving my lights on. So, as I was leaving work last night, I walked out to my car and started digging in my bag for my keys. I couldn't find them. Then I found them. They were sitting, in all their mocking glory, on the passenger seat of my locked car. I've already paid my renewal fee for my AAA membership, and I've already gotten my new membership card. It's sitting in my wallet. I figured, great, clean start, this one should be free. No...they still charged me because my new year doesn't start for another 9 days!

This morning, I put a spare car key in my wallet. That should cut down on problems of locking my keys in my car. So, now that I've prepared myself for dead batteries and locked keys, I figure I'm due for a flat tire. If it happens before next Friday, I'm going to either change it myself or hitchhike home. There's no way I'm paying AAA another dime!