CALL ME SNAKE

I almost never drive but had the vague sense I should check the mileage, figuring we were probably due for an oil change. When I finally did check, the odometer indicated that we had gone not just 3,000 miles but 13,000 miles! I could hardly believe it, as that’s more than we normally drive in two years, but there it was. The numbers don’t lie.

Still I could not account for such a reading and the only thing I could come up with was that my mother-in-law, who had used the car for a couple of weeks this winter, had ran up nearly 10,000 miles. But that too seemed hard to believe, and my wife resented me for even suggesting such a thing. I finally figured it out today: Somehow we’d switched over to a trip odometer and the numbers looked close enough to confuse me. They also confused the guys at the car repair shop who relied on those numbers as well. The long and short of it is: My mother-in-law is off the hot seat. And I, as usual, am back on it.