When I lived in Florida, Virginia, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, or Idaho, I never witnessed so many people asking for help with car problems, as I have here in North Dakota.

These people with car problems are not local people or North Dakota natives, they are typically down-on-their-luck people who were not doing very well in the states where they were living, and they came to North Dakota looking for work.  They came to North Dakota with very little money, alcoholism, drug addiction, no common sense, ADHD, and stupidity.

I am sick of these people.  I have worked with them, and I have tried to help them, but I no longer want to have anything to do with them, allowing their problems to become my problems.  Once you have any involvement with people like this, it seems like they have never ending problems, which could have been avoided if they would have used any kind of common sense or planned ahead.

In North Dakota, when I go to Wal-Mart, Menards, Runnings, Prairie Hills Mall, T-Rex Mall, or a grocery store, I will not park anywhere near a beat up car with an out-of-state license plate if there is any indication that the “Hey can you help me?” routine is about to play out.  Indicators of this would be people standing and looking at their car, the hood up, jumper cables, tow strap, or jack being out.

I have had so many ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), drug addict, alcoholic, stupid people ask me to jump start their car in North Dakota, that I bought several battery jump start boxes.  Any place else that I have ever lived, I had never personally witnessed anyone mistakenly trying to connect the positive jump start cable to a negative battery terminal, but these down-on-their luck people here in North Dakota will try to do this every time.

For those of you who don’t know, if you should ever volunteer to allow someone to connect jumper cables to your car battery, and they mistakenly connect the positive terminal of one car battery to the negative terminal of the other car battery, in about 1 second, this can short out the electrical wiring and electrical components in both vehicles, causing up to about $2,000 in damage to each vehicle.  Sometimes, it is hard to tell right away just how much electrical system damage has been done to each vehicle.

Your car’s battery, alternator, wiring, connectors, fuses, relays, sensors, ECU, computers, and other components, were not designed to handle the instantaneous passage of thousands of amps of current caused by someone connecting the positive battery terminal of one vehicle, to the negative battery terminal of the other vehicle.  This can melt everything electrical in your car.  An ADHD, drug addict, alcoholic, stupid person who has already caused their own vehicle to malfunction, will try to get you to let them connect jumper cables to your car, so that they can cause severe damage to your car too.

Yesterday evening, I was about 100 miles from Dickinson, sitting in a truck stop eating and using my computer.  I looked out the window, and I saw that ten feet away from where my car was parked, there was now someone standing there with a hammer in their hand.  I was thinking, what are they doing with that hammer?  I watched to see what was going on, and there were a couple of guys who were about 20 years old, working on a beat up Nissan truck which had Washington State license plates on it.

I was thinking to myself, that I needed to move my vehicle far away from them, because I did not want any involvement in their problems.  This is exactly what I am talking about, this is what I try to avoid, the “Hey can you help me people”, who always have problems.

I continued to use my computer, and these two young guys from Washington State showed me that they were in fact the epitome of everything that I am talking about.  They went from working on the underneath of their truck with a hammer, to buying a can of Sea Foam, to buying jumper cables.  A hammer, Sea Foam, and jumper cables?  What the hell is wrong with your truck that you have a problem that requires beating something with a hammer, is a fuel problem, and is also an electrical problem, which causes your battery to be dead?

When I saw them buy the jumper cables, I said to myself that there is no way that I am letting them connect to the battery in my vehicle.  Then, they began asking each of the store employees if they could drive their personal vehicle over to their Nissan truck, to give them a jump start.

The store employees were trying to find different excuses not to do it.  I didn’t want the store employees, who were young, poor, and maybe naive, to have their vehicle electrical system destroyed.  And I didn’t want for an unsuspecting customer to have the electrical system in their vehicle destroyed either.  I stopped what I was doing, and I told the two guys from Washington State that I had a battery jump start box.

I got my 1,000 peak amp jump start box out of my vehicle, and thank God it had a full charge, so that me or anyone else wouldn’t have to use our vehicles.  I unwound the two cables on my battery jump start box, and I said to the two young men, you connect it to your battery, and when you are ready, I will turn the jump start box on.  They connected the jump start box cables to their Nissan truck battery, and the audible alarm on the jump start box began beeping.

See!  I knew it!  These stupid ADHD kids from Washington State, the very first thing that they did was connect the battery cables the wrong way.  If this would have been my vehicle, a store employee’s vehicle, or a customer’s vehicle, there would have been instantaneous severe damage done to the vehicle’s electrical system!  Or, it could have blown up a battery and started a fire.

I told them to reconnect the battery jump start box cables the correct way, and I left my battery jump start box with them, while they continued to work on their Nissan truck.  After they had their truck running, I said to them, that they needed to be more careful hooking up jumper cables to their truck next time, with the jumper cables incorrectly connected, they could have caused a lot of damage to their truck and someone else’s vehicle.

It was cold and dark outside, and I picked up my battery jump start box and I put it back in the tool box in my vehicle, and I was about to close the trunk, but I took the battery jump start box back out to see if they had turned if off.  No, they had left my battery jump start box turned on, so that its cables were energized and could have shorted out in my vehicle and caused a fire, or the battery jump start box would have just been dead when I got it out to use it next time in an emergency.