My kids love to play with the dome lights in the car.  There is something satisfying about the way a dome light clicks on and off, so I completely understand the urge.  My wife and I have tried to instill an awareness of the need for these lights to be turned off before they get out of the car, but this doesn't always go as well as we would hope.  So it was no surprise when Jennie told me her car battery was dead.

I'm always looking for an excuse to feel like a manly man, so I valiantly told Jennie, "No problem.  I've got this!"  Then I said to my oldest daughter, Alivia, "Come help Dad jump Mom's car" and motioned toward the garage as though I were Tim "the Toolman" Taylor.

I popped the hoods of both cars.  "We're going to use the life from my car, to send life to Mom's," I explained.  But Alivia looked at me quizzically when I told her that the next step was to find the snaky things with the metal teeth.  (Granted, that's probably not how your average automotive shop describes jumper cables.)

Unfazed by her rapidly deteriorating level of childlike amazement, I carefully connected the cable to both batteries.  "Being careful is key, especially after the live battery is hooked up," I told Alivia.  "Because if the teeth of the two clips touch once you have juice flowing, well... you got a one-way ticket to sparky town, baby.  Sparky.  Town.  Been there, done that, so don't want to go back."

Once I'd started my car, I asked Livy to get behind the wheel of Jennie's and fire it up.  "Livy, hit it."

Nothing.

"I said, hit it."

Nothing.

"Righty-tighty, baby, righty-tighty."

"Um, Dad?  Is the garage supposed to be full of so much smoke?"

"Just turn it again, honey...  Wait, what smoke?"  I asked as her question finally hit my brain a full five seconds later.

"Daddy, the jumper cables are melting!" she cried.

I shot out of my car.  Sure enough, the jumper cables were melting, like the faces of the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Burnt rubber dripped all over the cars, all over the ground, forming a puddle made up of liquefied black and red cable.

The smart thing would have been to turn off my car, or to tell Alivia to run for help, but I didn't know what to do. I just stood there, watching in disbelief.