AAA or UPS??

A little background:
We have 3 Saturns, one being a plain old 93 SL. It may not be the most glamorous or in the best of shape but it's paid for and it gets the best gas mileage of the 3.
A few weeks ago, I was talking with Steve about some of the goofy things I learned early in my driving days (25 years ago!) and ended up telling him one of the stories of the 1972 Mercury Capri.
I was a junior in high school and had to ask permission (and have a good reason) to drive the family van. Dad was headed out of town on business for the week and said I could drive his car for the week!! Yeah - no school bus! Boy was I excited!!
Monday night, I was to attend a meeting at school so off I went. Up over the mountains, into the next town. It was probably dusk, so I had the headlights on but cars started flashing their lights at me anyway?!?! And then the dash was dark and...
then it wasn't running so well.
Or at all.
I managed to get it into one of the gas stations and called home. My step-mother got in the van and came after me. She pushed me all the way back home. Broke the back-up lights and such but we got the thing home. It would hav e to wait for Dad to figure it out and fix it.
No car for the week now and it was only Monday!!
When Dad called home, we told him what happened. He proceded to tell me that if I had been a UPS driver (as he had been), I would have been told to take my shoe off and hit the battery terminals with the heel. It would have been fine.
It turned out that the alternator had failed so banging on the battery terminals wouldn't have actually helped for that situation but... the story stuck.

Flash foward 25 years and I drove the little car to work. After work, when all I want to do is get home and crash, I turn the key and...
NOTHING!
No cranking, no clock, no radio, nothing.
Being a stick, the first thing I decided to try is popping the clutch.
The only other person at work at that point is one of our truck drivers with a bad hip. But he wouldn't get in and let me push! What a sight we must have been!
But...
still nothing.
Pop the hood and find the battery terminals. They are hidden off the back side of the battery, poking out from under the battery cover. They looked ok but what did I have to lose?!?!?!
I took off my clog and smacked the first terminal. It almost looked like I pushed it into the battery. But nothing bad happened so... I hit the other one, too.
Then I got back in the car and turned the key.

(Plain) Jane started right up!

I drove straight home, do not pass go, do not collect $200, etc. (I really didn't want to run those errands anyway!)

She has started and run every time I've asked her to since.
Thank you UPS!

p.s. Anyone know how to reset the clock on an old Saturn radio??