You Really Should Be A AAA Member When...

* you drive a car with over 150,000 miles on it;

* you drive a car that starts in with the tin-trap rattle-rattle as soon as you turn over the engine and increases to a rattle-rattle thud-thud-tinny-jiggle once you get moving;

* you are the type of person who, because your car has really good sound-proofing, simply chooses to ignore noises you can't hear well from inside;

* you figure you've put enough money into the ten-year-old hunk of tin that it's not really worth bothering with pesky maintenance items like replacing the timing belt;

* you drive a car on which the steering wheel does a Vegas showgirl shimmy any time you are moving -- s l o w and then faster faster faster as you pick up speed -- and the shimmy-shimmy threatens to jiggle your hands right off the ends of your arms.

And if none of those things alone is enough to convince you to go for the bargain AAA keeps offering in monthly mailings and just rejoin already, and all of them taken together STILL haven't gotten you to join, you know you should be a AAA member when:

* your wife borrows your car to go bowling with your son because HER car has a dead battery due to someone leaving the interior dome light on all night, and then on the way home from bowling, in the pitch dark of a pretty empty stretch of highway, she has a colossal blowout that sounds like someone has replaced the left front wheel with an airplane engine that is roaring to life while simultaneously scraping along the highway at 70 miles an hour, the car shimmy-shimmy-cocoa-puffs, but she manages to control its shenanigans long enough to get it off the nearest exit and into the parking lot of a friendly looking apartment complex, only to realize that your spare tire is already on the car, so that even if she wanted to try to change the tire in the dark parking lot in 25 degree temperatures with only her nearly-five-year-old to help, there is no spare to replace the one that looks like it has been shredded in a giant blender, and so she has to call you at 8:05pm and tell you that she will need your help to come and pick her up, but first you will have to figure out how to charge the battery in her car so that you can start it (and you hope you can do that without having to call a neighbor for a jump because THAT would just be embarrassing), and then you have to put a coat and mittens and boots on top of the jammies your daughter (who should already be asleep) is wearing and hope that you can find your wife and son in the random apartment complex parking lot in which they have landed -- especially because since you have left your cell phone in YOUR car, your wife is sitting in that parking lot with both her cell phone and yours, and therefore you will not be able to call her if you cannot find her -- and then you will have to drive everyone home, and then you will all have to go back out there tomorrow after finding a place to get a new tire for your car, so that you can change the tire and bring your car home.

And that is a lot of hassle that could have been avoided if only someone could have called AAA for a tow from the side of the highway.

Then again, now that everyone is safely at home, and there was no serious accident involved, and you're going to buy a new car anyway just as soon as you can figure out which one you want to buy... it's probably not worth spending all that money to join AAA just now, is it?