Close Call

Once upon a time there was a coach who owned a magical carriage.  It was his favoritist ride EVER! It could do so many tricks, carry so much stuff, and could be transformed in so many configurations, well, what wasn't there to love?

Then one day the battery went dead - quite suddenly, as it happened. This was an unnerving event, because the age of the car meant there could  be any number of serious problems happening. The coach took a chance and swapped out the battery for a new one, and for a time it seemed to work.

A couple of months down the road coach began to notice a slight lag in the starter every time he started the engine. Coach's ear, finely tuned from years of shade tree mechanicking, felt the unmistakable fingernails of dread pulling down his back. His beloved chariot was breaking down. No use denying it.

Coach lifted the hood, meekly testing the battery cables for a sturdy connection. The positive cable was indeed loose, so after some trouble coach was able to firm up the connection. Good friends helped jump start the vehicle, and coach began to feel as if all would be well.

It was a long trip back from Mitchell, and it was by then dark. Coach began to notice it was harder and harder to see the road. Before long warning lights began blinking all over the dash. If coach had an ejector seat he might have pulled the chord at this point, because everything was going haywire on the dash. Coach guided the crippled vehicle into the nearest open lot and called home to his mommy.

Okay, not his mommy, but his daughter. Fortunately coach's daughter also happened to be a princess, and the beautiful maiden arrived on her unicorn, which had traveled over a magical rainbow. The princess had with her a secret handbag, and from it she pulled out long wires. On one end of the wires she connected coach's battery. On the other end she lifted the unicorn's tail, and...

Whoa.

Okay, so it wasn't a unicorn, it was her convertible. The battery is in the trunk, so she popped the trunk and hooked up the other end of the jumper cables. The car was started, and coach's car limped home - barely!

So look for coach to be riding to practice on a unicorn across a magical rainbow tomorrow. Or something like that.