Warning Lights

I had just left work and was driving very slowly through the parking garage because of all of its speed bumps. It's not a good neighborhood and there was no one else around as far as I could tell, so I wasn't happy when I heard what I thought was someone trying to open my door. There were several rapid clicks like someone was pulling on the door handle. Instinctively, I stepped on the gas.

The clicks continued. No one could run that fast. Was I dragging someone? I didn't see anyone. Then the pieces of the puzzle came together. I opened my door and slammed it shut. The clicking sound stopped.

I had once again driven off with a door not quite closed. I did think it odd that the interior lights did not go off as usual, forcing me to manually turn them off. My guess is that the clicking sound was my door trying to lock itself.

But I noticed something else that wasn't good; my car has no idiot lights. You would think that after driving the car for a year and a half, I would have noticed that before now, but it escaped my notice. There are a bunch of gauges, but no red lights to alert me that there is a problem. Gauges, in theory, are preferable to idiot lights because they give early notice that a problem is starting, but they are not much good for idiots, like me, who don't look at gauges.

Now that I know my car hasn't been dumbed down, I'm going to have to be smarter and look at the gauges occasionally. How annoying.