Old dog, new tricks

Sometimes when people learn that they've been doing some minor thing wrong and that there's a better way to do it, they dig in and continue doing the thing the way they've always done it. They get angry and defensive if you say anything about it. "I like going this way!" they'll say about driving someplace using a certain route. It's like they don't want to admit even to themselves that they've wasted thousands of hours and gallons of gas. 

The gas cap and door '98 Toyota Camry.

I probably do this about some things but I try not to. Still, it's humbling to find out that I've been wrong about so many things, even though I'm good now at admitting it when I am. 
I drive a twenty-year old car, my late mother's. I'd driven it off and on when visiting or housesitting for my aging parents since they got it, and I've been driving it all the time since they both died eight years ago. It wasn't until two years ago that I realized that the little door that leads to the gas cap has a sort of slot you can put the cap in while filling the car. 
How many times have you seen a gas cap on the ground at a filling station, or driven off with your own on the trunk, which it slides off of and is lost forever? Probably never, if you're young. But if you're my age, sixty, you've seen that happen at least a few times.