Panne D'Essense

Essense!
Backstory:

Near the beginning of when I started stopping for people, one of the people was out of gas, but they already had a gallon. I became nervous that I would stop for someone and wouldn't be able to because they would need gas, and I wouldn't have any. So I bought a gallon gas can, and filled it up. 

Now the question was, how can I keep it from smelling up my car?

I tried tying it to the floor of my trunk. No dice.

I tied it to the ceiling of my trunk with twine. The metal wore through the twine and the can tipped over and smelled up the car.

Then I took a break (for a month or two). 

Then I tried again. I cut out a strap of leather (it's nice to have some laying around). I put a holes in each end of the strap, looped it around the metal on the roof of my trunk and put a carabiner through the holes and hung the can from the carabiner. One of the holes tore through and my car smelled like gas again (but not nearly as bad as the first time).

Finally I figured it out. Carabiner in contact with the metal of the ceiling, leather strap holding the handle of the gas can such that it is sitting on the floor, but cannot tip over. (This was just a week or two ago)

Panne D'Essence

Back to the present (or the recent past, rather):

Wednesday morning.

"Do you need some help?"

The woman sitting in the driver's seat is looking at me with very sad eyes. There are two or three young kids in the car with her. The younger one is sleeping in a car-seat in the back. "Yes," she says. "I'm out of gas."

I start smiling at her. "I have a gallon of gas for you." 

"Thank you so much," she says as I'm already on my way back to my car. 

I get the gas, put it in her car (making my hands smell like gas in the process; it didn't occur to me that maybe I might also want to keep a rag with gas can until this point). I stopped back at the passenger window to let her know she was all set. 

"Thank you so much," she said again with those sad eyes. 

"No problem," I said smiling back at her. 

I think she needed more than a gallon of gas. I hope that when she got where she was going, someone gave her a long hug. But hopefully a smile from a stranger was enough at that moment.