Ahem. Hello. Hello? Are you there?

My car has been doing this to me for the past two years or so and I’ve been completely ignorant as to why. You know that little light on your dash that comes on when you pull the emergency brake (Usually the word “BRAKE,” brightly lit up right in the center) that is really hard to miss but easy to ignore cause the brakes are working and the emergency brake is off? Well, it’s not just for the emergency brake after all. I’ve had a couple other cars go through the same thing and I owe an apology to all of them.

Early on, about the time I started learning how to drive (coincidentally right around the time computer controls were introduced into pretty much every car), the silver station wagon I was driving (chick magnet) began to intermittently display its Brake! light (it actually had an exclamation point) but it would go off if you would forcibly slam the emergency brake down so my dad’s conclusion to this issue was that the sensor to tell the light to go on or off was faulty. This happened again with the next car I had and every car after that where the method to engage the emergency brake was a lever on the console. Four in total, including my current one.

Here’s the thing with that, or so I have come to learn since having this giant a-ha I’m a dumbass moment recently: your car might be in need of brake fluid if that light comes on as did mine and probably all the others that were screaming for it in the best way they could by illuminating that one particular light on the dash that should tell the idiot behind the wheel that if your emergency brake is off and your brakes are functional that THERE MIGHT BE SOMETHING ELSE WRONG.

My brakes were a little soft recently so I began to investigate, immediately jumping to the worst-case scenario that came with a four figure repair bill. I know a little about cars, enough so that I can read the labels on top of the caps and don’t put oil into the washer fluid reservoir. I understand how brake systems work (pressure, fluid, no air, contaminants bad!) and found out that my brakes were spongy due to my fluid levels being less than adequate (read: almost empty) and that my poor car had been trying to tell me this for quite some time. I know this because the moment I had filled the brake fluid reservoir to the little line with the word “max” next to it something wonderful happened—the brake light on the dash went off. Not only had I put myself in danger for a sizeable amount of time but my car was trying to tell me that I’m a dumb-dumb for not listening. In the politest possible way of course. It is a Honda after all.

I can safely say that the best advice my father ever gave me was RTFM. Which he seldom seems to do himself and why I seem to have fallen victim to his advice on other occasions.