• Zron@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    I once watching someone’s truck engine burst into flame in the parking lot of the grocery store.

    The driver had popped the hood to look at the smoke coming out and had just started running away when it burst into flames.

    I grabbed my fire extinguisher from my car and put out the engine fire, and then the lady came back and started yelling at me for getting fire extinguisher dust all over her truck.

    She started talking about lawsuits by like the third sentence so I just took my empty fire extinguisher and drove to a different grocery store. I’ve been hesitant to help random people with their cars ever since. I always want to, but then I remember that crazy lady and decide it might not be worth my time or money if I have to use something of mine to bail someone else out.

    • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      That sucks, some people react in shitty ways in a crisis but I’m glad your impulse was to act and not just be a bystander. There’s a furious storm of chemistry going on that can trick this weird thinking meat into lashing out in irrational ways.

      I’ve known some drivers who were completely oblivious to the state of their vehicles: they’d keep on trucking until the smoke pouring out of the hood got too thick to see and then stick their head out the window for the remainder of the journey. Only slight exaggeration. The old Simpsons trick of fixing a “Check Engine” indicator with a strip of electrical tape on the display turns out to be less than ideal, who could’ve guessed?

      In any event, you spent that extinguisher for some valuable experience not just on the technical “Pull, Aim, Squeeze, Sweep” side of things but also the human component. I hope you will continue to help those in need since it sounds like you’re the type of person who feels compelled to respond rather than sit back and film a clip for the 'gram or whatever.