On how to jump start your car -- you'll impress your friends with this valuable knowledge!

If you leave the lights on in  your car overnight and wake up with a dead battery, are you dead in the water?
There's no need to use up a AAA call to deal with this common dilemma. And if you have two cars, there's no need to bother anyone else to come help you, either. If you only have one car, you'll need a sympathetic friend or neighbor's help.
Position the two vehicles next to, or facing, each other. Don't let them touch each other, though. This could lead to electric shock or short.
Turn off anything you don't need in both cars, such as radio, lights, flashers. Turn off both cars, and place in park or neutral.
Look at your battery. Find the positive and negative leads. Often the positive will be red, and the negative black. But make sure. You don't want to mix these up.

Take out the jumper cables you ALWAYS carry in your car, and untangle them. It's important that you don't let the copper ends touch each other once they're hooked up to either car. You'll get a heck of a spark if you do, and could short out the electrical system in the cars. Bad! Bad! (Admittedly, this is easier to manage if someone is helping you.)

Clamp the red clamp of one end of the jumper cables to the positive lead on the battery in the dead vehicle. (You might need to lift a little, plastic cover before you can access the terminal.)
Next, secure the red clamp on the other end of the cables to the positive, (red), terminal on the donor vehicle.
Now connect the black jumper cable to the black (negative) terminal on the DONOR vehicle.
Finally, connect the last black jumper cable lead to an unpainted, metal surface inside the DEAD vehicle . . . and the advice I read says to connect to some engine bolt or something other than the remaining battery lead, though this is how I've always done it. The reason, they said, is that connecting to the final battery lead/terminal could cause a spark and ignite fumes from the battery. That would be BAD. So I guess I've been lucky so far, and next time I'll try their way.
Now, start up the DONOR car. Let it idle a few minutes. Then start the DEAD car, and rev it a couple times. Don't go crazy and flood the engine!
Ok. Disconnect the leads in reverse order: Negative on formerly dead car; negative on donor car; positive on donor car; positive on formerly dead car.
Now run that baby for around 20 minutes, to ensure the battery is fully charged by the car running.
If this happens again, and for no apparent reason, you may have a faulty alternator or a battery that needs to be replaced. Or you just chronically leave your lights on!
QUIZ: Do you have jumper cables in each car you own? Do you know how to use them? Don't be a helpless ninny! Take care of this today.