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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Little Discourage

How many people does it take to change a tire?

Apparently about seven...as long as one of them has AAA.

So Sunday night I was leaving our Holiday Work Meeting, with Serena in my car, when something felt funny and I pulled over. Lo and behold, I had a flat tire. Luckily, most of the staff were still around so I had no fewer than 10 people come over to offer assistance.

I have actually never changed a tire, to be honest. I think I am finally to the point where I could change one if I needed to, but so far in my life, I have never really needed to.

Anyway, that's what guy friends, boyfriends, dads, and random strangers are for, which is exactly what happened Sunday night. I had barely yelled out, "I have a flat tire!" before everyone was over there jacking the car up, making inappropriate "That's what she said" jokes, and then...discovering that the tire was stuck. The lug nuts were off, yet the tire was hanging on like no one's business.

It's disconcerting to see your car on a jack and hear people say words like, "stuck" and "corroded." Then they started asking me when I last got tires, which of course, I couldn't remember. I am not smrt when it comes to cars-I just do what I'm told, when I'm told. (Except for this last oil change, which I put off for way too long. Sorry, car.)

Once we couldn't get the tire off, Ben, who has AAA, called to report the problem and we were given a 70 minute ETA. So we spent the next 70 minutes: playing nerf football, getting wet/hiding under umbrellas, making jokes, gossiping, trying to fix the tire by pouring coke on it (Thanks, Serena!), etc.

I appreciated everyone staying, but I also felt bad since I know most of them had better things to do. Serena reminded me, though, that everyone was there on their own accord (Well, almost everyone, haha.)

AAA got there at about 1230am, an hour and a half after we had called them. I was staying positive, but had this little voice in the back of my head that kept saying I would have to get my car towed and wouldn't be going home that night. That, my friends, would have been horrrrible news. Luckily, though, the AAA guy had super quads and after a few kicks, had loosened my tire and had it replaced before I could even offer to kiss him on the mouth in thanks.

5 comments:

Courtney Craig, DC said...

yeah I've had to change a tire way too many times but I always get help. The process seems so simple but you really have to muscle it to get the job done and I'm a weakling.

The AAA guy must have been hott for a kiss on the mouth...

Miss Scarlet said...

Courtney- Haha,I was quite grateful:)

Anonymous said...

At least you didn't break down on the highway! That would have been worse.

Ant said...

I am in the unenviable position of being one of these guys that is pretty shit at dealing with the innards of cars...

A tyre change I could just about handle, but I've never had to do it in anger before.

Anything else, and I start doing that guy-thing of making it all up "the elmo pipe needs changed, else the flood-combobulator will get blocked" etc...

Dash said...

whats better than AAA is an anytime serevice prider that comes out within the hour for emergency assistnce nothing like the reliability and consistency combined with good service...