Of course I smelled it!!

In keeping with the competitive nature of my family, I thought I'd try my hand at a contest the Fairy Godmother has entered. It seems that Whiskey in my Sippy Cup and Charming & Delightful, have a desperate need to torment their nasal passages via the net. They'd like to know about THAT SMELL in your car.

You can imagine that being a Real Life Fairy Tale Princess, and mother of a toddling Ogre-Child, I would never have any strange olfactory sensations when entering my chariot. (you buy that?) However, keep in mind that I was not always a Fairy Tale Princess.

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So here is my "What's That Smell?":

Once upon a time, in my pre-Princess days, my choice mode of transportation was a beautiful, 8-cylinder, kick your Camero's ass because YOU can't handle the hills in the middle of nowhere, blue Cadillac. I loved that car. Sure, she guzzled a little oil now and then. And now days she'd probably break the bank with her gas mileage, but considering she was already a "classic" when I got her, she did pretty good. And I'm telling you, nothing runs like 8-cylinders!! *purrrrrr*

However, on one of my magic trips to visit the "Billy Goats Gruff" and the "Trolls Under the Bridge" something went terribly wrong!!!

Everything was flowers and rainbows on the trip North. It was only when I started home that it became apparent that something was terribly wrong!!

In the first 30 miles of the trip, my lovely chariot refused to excede 40 mph downhill!! Oh, poor baby!! What could possibly be wrong with you!! I scrambled through every possible click, clank, rattle and jingle I'd heard over the past 6 months. I raced over the maintenance schedule wondering where I could have gone wrong in my delicate care of her. At the nearest town, I concluded I could not possible make the remainder of the trip at this rate. No doubt, my precious baby could never handle the semi-mountainous hills that would await her further south. So I side-tracked 12 miles East to the Evil Step-Mother's house (Cruella) to see if I could borrow her phone.

It is at this point I realized that in those 30 miles, my car had guzzled down 1/2 tank of gas! Now I realize that old tanks like these are constantly thirsty, but they are also equipped with 5,000-gallon gas tanks in order to accommidate for this problem. 1/2 tank of gas in 30 miles was ridiculously unnerving (not to mention the fact that my checkbook was now sobbing hysterically in the passenger seat).

Cruella was not home (off searching for innocent puppies to torture, no doubt) but I knew she wouldn't mind if I used her phone in a desperate situation like this. So I slipped in the door and used the calling card number she'd given me to get in contact with the youngest of the "Billy Goats Gruff". Young Billy just happened to be my preferred mechanic since he usually only charged me a case of beer and a designated drive home! Young Billy tells me he'll be there as soon as he can to check out the problem and he'll try to stay sober enough to get me home if he can't fix it.

It is about midnight when Billy arrives to Cruella's house and begins examining my poor chariot. I explain all of the above incident to him as he hangs his head under the hood and asks his accomplice to start the vehicle. Standing at his side, staring into the dark area under the hood filled with 15,000 contraptions that I don't understand, I suddenly screamed "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!"

Uncle Billy order the car to be shut off and slams the hood of the car, while I stare in awe and try to imagine why the inside of my car just lit itself up like the frigging Fourth of July!!

Billy turns to me and says, "I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is, your car isn't going anywhere tonight. The good news is, I can fix it!"

Still awestruck, I asked what the problem was.

Half grinning he explains how a gas line had broke in the car (explaining the terrible gas mileage) at the same time a wire shorted under the hood burning the wires to 4 of the cylinders (thus the lack of power). "But I just have one question for you," he said.

I could tell from the look on his face it was going to be one of those smart-ass questions I'd want to slap him for, so I responded with the usual teenage enthusiasm, "What?"

"Did you smell smoke? Because you should have smelled smoke! Didn't you smell smoke?"

Feeling slightly stupid because I never smelled smoke from my obviously impaired vehicle I responded, "OF COURSE I SMELLED IT! I inhaled half a pack of cigarettes praying the car would get me far enough to call for help! YES, I SMELLED SMOKE! How was I supposed to know it was the car?"

Billy was laughing so hard by the time we got in his vehicle it was hard to understand what he was saying, but I think it was something to the effect of "you really need to take up chewing or something while you drive!"

What an ASSHOLE!

So TECHNICALLY this is actually about "Why The Hell Can't You Smell That?" instead of what I could smell. But hey, disqualify me. It's pretty hard to top dead rats! I didn't think the usual Motherly encounters of finding abandoned sippy cups so far gone that recovering them requires a HAZMAT team, a tetnus shot and a shotgun was going to cut it.