My Note to the Mechanic

So I was driving along in my Subaru Outback and the check engine light came on and I know what to do if the little oil lamp light comes on—pull over immediately or the engine will explode or something—and what to do if the little electrical thingy light comes on—drive straight to Goodyear without turning off the car because if you do it will be dead as a post and I’d have to call Triple A where if I get it to Goodyear I can just call Bob—but I didn’t know what to do if the check engine light came on. So I looked at my odometer and it said 63333 which seemed fairly significant, I mean, maybe it’s like the call maintenance light on a copy machine but I was thinking I had gotten my 60,000 mile check or maybe that was Bob’s car but later on I found out it was my car so it wasn’t the 60,000 mile thingy. And I was on my way to lunch with a friend and I didn’t have my cell phone because I forgotten to recharge it so the phone was basically like my car would have been if the electric thingy light had come on and I had shut it off—by which I mean dead as a post—so I couldn’t call my friend and my car wasn’t acting weird or anything so I just kept driving, you know? So I get to the lunch place—some dive she likes in Macedonia, food was boring, service was terrible, don’t go there—and my car hasn’t, like, burst into flames or anything and I tell her about my check engine light and she says that her gas cap says that if you don’t put the gas cap on right the check engine light will come on which is obviously stupid since a gas cap is nowhere near the engine unless you have one of the old VW bugs and they didn’t even have heat much less a check engine light but we go look at her gas cap and yeah, that’s what it says so we take my gas cap off and put it back on but the check engine light stays lit. We have lunch anyway. (The check engine light isn’t lit while we have lunch because the car is off.) And then I drive the car to Goodyear where the guy tells me that it isn’t cosmic unless the car is, like, running rough or something, but I should bring it in soon. So that was Friday and I drive it the rest of Friday and Saturday and Sunday—but almost not on Sunday except I have to go get dog food but Pet’s Mart closes at 6:00 on Sunday so I could have not driven it—and on Monday and when I start it up after not driving it for a bunch of hours the check engine light isn’t on but after about ten minutes it comes on. So now it’s Tuesday and could you check it and tell me what’s wrong?

Thanks.