Oy. I should've just kept my mouth shut.

Today on the way to school I was behind some horrid Pennsylvania driver, and he hit his brakes for no stupid reason. I hit mine too... I didn't slam on them or anything, because even though he was slow and annoying, I was driving in my slippers, so I didn't tailgate him because my feet felt weird on the petals. Anyway, my car slows down like always when I have to make a sudden stop... kind of jerks you fowards, but nothing major. Then, the car just stops all of a sudden. I didn't put my foot on the brake harder or anything, it just suddenly jerked down to no speed, and my stuff in the passenger seat went flying. It felt like the brakes were grining on something. So I took my foot off and then put it back on, and everything was fine.

Because my mom and I have both noticed that the car is kind of hard to slow down, I called her when I got to school to tell her that I think she was right about needing new brake pads.

Apparently she told my dad, because when I got home he said that the brake pads were new, I just probably needed to tighten the brakes. To do so, I should put the emergency brake on once every week when I'm parked somewhere.

...at least, that's what a normal person would say. But my dad is a RAMBLER. He probably has a PhD in the subject or something. So instead of just telling me one simple instruction, he tells me EVERYTHING about how brakes work in the first place. THEN, he tells me how old cars used to tighten their brakes up until the 1980s. Yeah, I really needed to know that, seeing as my car was made in 2003. Then he tells me that to tighten my brakes now, I should use the emergency brake. Then he tells me exactly how an emergency brake works. Then he tells me what would happen if I forgot the emergency brake was on and tried to drive. Then he tells me what would've happened if I forgot the emergency brake and tried to drive in the car that we sold back in 2001. Then he tells me what would happen if I floored the gas pedal with the emergency brake on. Then he tells me exactly how to apply the emergency brake, and exactly how to release it.

Sheesh!!! And he wonders why I have to have him explain things to me repeatedly. It's because I'm trying to absorb the information, but all I ever end up learning is how a whole friggin' chasis works instead of being told ONE SIMPLE INSTRUCTION. If I wanted to be an auto mechanic, trust me, I would've dropped out of high school years ago. I DON'T. So please, just tell me what to do, not EVERYTHING that happens when I do it, or everything that would've happened if I did it in 1987, etc. God I hate talking to him.