Thank Goodness for Manual Transmission

We were traveling to an out of town cross country event for little miss molly. This was being done in our 1993 Honda civic “little Miss Sunshine style”. Apparently it had a dying battery coupled with an electrical issue that drained the battery so heaven forbid if you left the head lights on for 5min. As I predicted I left the lights on the convenience store. The race started in 10min and we were still a good 2mi away. What do you do? We had driven 90miles to the cross country meet for the 14sec glimpse of your runner and I was not giving up. I let the car roll backwards and got it point down the slight slope in the convenience store parking lot. Gunnar, the muscles of this operation, was poised to start pushing. Mom, like a rowing captain, started cheering him on as he pushed the car. We were increasing in speed with every shout from mom. Slowly we were building up our speed as we crawled across the parking lot. Among the crowd that was watching our fate, were 3 high school boys who chose to watch vs help us out. As we approached the street it was due or be stranded. I popped the clutch and with poof of tail pipe smoke the car came roaring to life. With the fear of the car dying we dared not slow down. Mom screamed for Gunnar to jump in. His timing was perfect as he propelled himself into the backseat, slamming the door behind him. With a final backfire we sputtered off, praise the manual transmission.