Ah, yes. Logical women.

My wife believes the evidence of her eyes regarding the gas gauge in her Honda. When it reads empty, she believes it is empty. I tell her there are still three gallons in the tank. We go to the gas station and fill the tank. It takes eight and a half gallons. I show her the owner's manual, which lists the tank's capacity as 11.9 gallons.

Actually, it all started one long weekend when we were heading to Monterey and Carmel from our home in El Cerrito, just north of Berkeley, via Danville, where we take our dogs for boarding. When we left home, the tank was a quarter full, according to the gas gauge. I assured her we had plenty of gas to get to the kennel and refused to stop and fill up. When we left the kennel, the needle was halfway between one quarter and empty.

She started insisting that I get gas, that it wasn't good for the car to run when the gas was low. I paid her no attention but headed up I-880 towards San Jose. By the time we got west of San Jose, heading for Santa Cruz, she was getting really antsy, but I was driving, and so on up the coast range. When we reached the summit, the needle was on the empty mark. Still I drove on. In and attempt to quiet her down, I told her I'd give her a hundred dollars if we ran out of gas before we got to Santa Cruz (we're now about a hundred miles from home), but she wasn't appeased, but kept muttering all the way into Santa Cruz and would hardly look at me when we parked outside the restaurant where we were meeting friends for lunch.

Lunch did her a world of good. She stopped talking about gas and enjoyed her lunch and the time with our friends. After a couple of hours (and a parking ticket) we headed back toward the highway, and I finally stopped for gas, the needle just below the E mark. I filled the tank. It took eight and a half gallons.

Two years after that demonstration, she still bugs me to stop to fill the tank if the needle drops below the quarter mark. --seed