Apparently, stop doesn’t really mean stop.

I took my car in for service today.  It’s a great little convertible, perfect for a girl who lives on the beach.  But I’ve been thinking about getting rid of it.  First of all, I already have a 5-year-old SUV with 100,000 miles on it that has never given me a moment’s trouble. I don’t exactly need the convertible, even though it is terribly fun to drive, especially on these beautiful fall Florida days when the temperature likes to stay in the 70s.

The real reason I’ve been thinking about selling it is that I keep getting a message saying, “High battery drain.”  Six months ago, I called the service department at the nearest dealership, and the nice guy who answered my call told me the problem is that I have a racehorse of a car that I’m basically treating like a yak.  I’m driving all of three miles every day, and the car just wasn’t built for short, slow trips.

My car deserves better, and although it was going to hurt, I was prepared to do the right thing.

Today I took it for an oil change.  I intended to talk to the used car sales manager about taking it off my hands, but something interesting happened when I was dropping it off at the service department.  The service rep took my key and plugged it into his computer so the car could tell them what it needed.  The guy looked at me and said, “Your car isn’t turned off.”

Huh?

My car has a cool feature called “comfort access.”  That means I can open my driver’s door and start the engine by pushing the start button, and I don’t even need the key.  As long as the key is on my person or even in my purse, the car will unlock, and all I have to do is push the button to start it.

He continued, “With the comfort access feature, you need to hit the button twice to turn the car completely off.  Just hitting it once turns the engine off, but it leaves the car actually on for 46 minutes.”

So I learned something new today.  Something kind of important.

The good news is that the high battery drain is not caused by my grandma-like driving habits.  I can keep my car!  The bad news is that I’ve been causing the high battery drain because I’m too damn lazy to read the owner’s manual.

Then again, I’ve always been the kind of person who believes stop means stop.  The first time.