When my late husband had his leg amputated in 1996, he was in the hospital for three weeks. One night I was driving home around midnight from the hospital, a distance of about 50 miles, in the rain. We lived (and I still do) about 25 miles out in the country outside the city where the hospital was located. When I got in the car that night, I was so exhausted, rattled, distressed (he had had four surgeries, one each day, for a week, trying to save the leg-- the fifth surgery cut it off) that it didn't register on me that when I turned the car on, all of the panel lights came on and stayed on and that this was a bad thing.
I started driving. Halfway between the city limits and my house-- in the middle of outer fcuking boonie land-- all of the lights went out, panel lights and headlights. It was pouring down rain and I was driving 60 miles an hour with no headlights.
After a few minutes of this, I figured out that this was not very smart, so I pulled off at an exit. Nothing for many miles around-- no houses, no gas stations, no lights, no towns. I had two cell phones with me-- his and mine. Both batteries were dead.
I turned off the car-- of course, its battery was dead and I could not restart it, not that I could drive anyway with no lights. Finally someone came along and I flagged them down and called a friend who came and picked me up, drove me to my house, got my husband's pickup, drove back to the scene (round trip of ~20 miles), and towed my car to the yard of the people whose cell phone I had used. Didn't want to leave it on the highway-- not sure why-- seemed like a good idea at the time.
Lesson learned: I have never again let my cell phone get even close to being run down. I have a car charger and a home charger and use both of them.
Put your phone charger in the bathroom or next to where you do your makeup and plug it in every night when you brush your teeth. In the morning when you go in the kitchen, unplug it and put it in your purse and leave it there at all times, so you will know where it is. God forbid a thousand times you or someone's life should ever depend on that phone being operational and you can't find it or it is run down. You will never forgive yourself. You don't have to wear it at all times, or have the ringer on, if it bothers you-- just look at the screen and see if you have any missed calls or messages. End of lecture. xoxoxox
