Don't Ignore Red Warning Lights

Yesterday I was driving to piano lessons. It was the gray 1996 Ford Taurus, an old car that occasionally has things go wrong with it. Suddenly I noticed a flashing red light that looked like a battery on the dashboard. Then it stopped flashing; it was solid red. I mentioned it to Rebecca who was also in the car. We decided that it probably meant that the car's battery was charging, and Rebecca commented that it was misleading to make the light red, since that gave the illusion that there was a serious problem. So I drove on, forgetting about the light. Then, when I was parking, I heard a strange clicking sound. I wonder what that is, I thought to myself. Maybe I just never noticed it before. Later that day, my parents were out using the car when they called to say that the car had stopped working. It had run out of battery, the lights all went out, and it stopped moving. They were on an onramp to 128, and they had to carefully steer onto the side of the road and call AAA to tow them home. They thought that some kind of belt had broken that charges the battery. Suddenly, I remembered the red light. "Oh," I said, "when I was driving I saw a red light shaped like a battery. That must have been why. And I heard a strange sound--that must have been the broken belt. I'm sorry; I forgot to tell you."

-Philip