red lights

I was waiting at a red light in Glenfield last night when I discovered I was almost out of petrol. I couldn’t think where the nearest petrol station was, so I turned around to ask the people in the car behind me if they knew. They laughed and said no, but hopped in the back of my car to help me look. They were young, probably around eighteen – there was an Asian boy, a brunette girl and a red-haired boy. We drove off, the car struggling with the weight, but we made it to the next red light. There we were accosted by a group of young boys (supervised by my friend Moen) who asked us to sign their petition. I told them to go away and we kept driving.

A petrol station suddenly appeared before us, and I completed a rather illegal manoeuvre to pull into it. I spent ages positioning my car beside a pump before discovering that the pump, despite having approximately ten different kinds of petrol, had no 97. I hopped out of the car and saw that it had turned into a wheelie office chair, which is probably why it was so hard to position. The Indian station attendant found the right pump and filled up my chair, while the three kids and I transferred the grocery shopping from their car to my chair. I asked them where they were going and they said Devonport. I asked them where they were from and they said Tauranga. We all laughed – that’s probably why they didn’t know where the nearest petrol stations were.

I drove off without the kids, and when I was a little way down the road received a text from the brunette asking me if her phone would do all right in Devonport, considering how it survived that blizzard.

And then my alarm went off.