Flat Tire Fun

Yesterday John noticed that one of the tires on our car was looking a little low, and mentioned that I might want to put some air in it before I went to work. Well, I got up this morning and the tire was beyond low, and verging on flat. So I went to the Wawa down the street and filled it up with air. Well, first I sat there wondering why the air pump wasn’t doing anything, and then I realized that not only do you have to push the start button, you also have to hold this little lever thing in to make the air come out of the hose. Anyway the tire filled right back up, and looked like it was staying inflated, so I headed off to work.

The tire looked fine when I got to work too, but I was a little worried I would come out to find it flat at the end of the day, and sure enough, I did. Now, my boss had walked out to the garage with me because she was even less optimistic about what the state of the tire would be (and rightly so as it turned out) so at least I wasn’t alone. And then my pal Doreen showed up as I was trying to wrench the stupid jack out of the trunk. And then Amy flagged down one of the guys who works for my company, Mike (a VP no less!), and yet another co-worker, Heath stopped to help too. I work with some very nice people. Not so nice? The two guys who were walking by right as Amy and I got out to the car who immediately pretended they couldn’t see us or the flat tire and practically ran away from us in case we were thinking of asking them for help. But they don’t work for my company.

Now, left to my own devices, I would have eventually gotten the tire changed. I’ve never done it on the car I have now, but one of the many problems my piece of crap Jetta had was frequent flat tires. But then I flashed back to the last time I changed a tire, which went something like this: The stupid jack wouldn’t open up. After I finally got the jack to perform the one task that was its whole reason for existing, the car fell off the jack. I blame the complicated VW instructions (all very German “for maximum efficiency, you must do x!”) about where you could and could not put the jack safely, which just confused the hell out of me. I tried again and was eventually successful. I had to jump up and down on the tire iron to get the lug nuts to move. Then the tire wouldn’t come off, and I was convinced the car was going to fall and crush me and I was going to die one of those stupid deaths you hear about. It ended up taking me an hour and a half and involved lots of swearing and getting very dirty. So…this time I let the Mike change the tire for me, while Amy, Heath and I stood around cracking jokes and trying to make helpful comments. The whole process went very smoothly for him, and only took about 15-20 minutes. Obviously I owe him some sort of thank-you gift, although I’m not sure what he would like.

The only problem is, I feel like a big girly cliché.