This is just an odd little story from my life.
One Saturday in February,
maybe 2006, I was going to meet with some friends and go to a matinee movie and
then get some dinner. The theater was
only five minutes or so from my apartment, but we had still planned to meet fifteen
or twenty minutes before the movie started.
I got in my car and backed out of the parking spot, but something seemed
wrong. I pulled back in and got out to
see that my left front tire was flat. Not
having time to change it, I went back in and called one of my friends – who had
a cell phone – to ask if he could pick me up.
And by the time he dropped me off that night, it was dark, so there was
no point trying to change my tire then.
On Sunday, after lunch I
planned on changing my tire. I’d had my
car for a couple years by this point, but I had never needed to change a tire on
it before. When I got it, I had looked
to see if there was a spare, and there was a small one and a jack, and I didn’t
think any more about it. Well, I went
out and opened my trunk, and got out the spare, and the jack. I looked around, but couldn’t see a lug
wrench. I knew some jacks had a handle
that doubled as a lug wrench, but that wasn’t the case with mine. So I had no way to take the old tire off. Fortunately, I had a can of Fix-a-Flat which
I think had been part of an emergency road kit I got for Christmas a few years
earlier. Unfortunately, since it was the
middle of February, it was frozen solid.
I took it in, but a couple hours later there was still a solid block in
it.
Thankfully, Monday was
President’s Day and I had the day off from work. The Fix-a-Flat had thawed and I went out and
put it in the tire. And nothing happened. So I called another friend – who lived closer
– to ask if I could borrow a lug wrench.
He came out and I soon had the old tire off, and found out why the Fix-a-Flat
did nothing: there was a foot long slice on the inside of the tire. The strut, or something, had broken and there
was a nice sharp chunk of metal that sliced though the tire. I’m not entirely sure when this happened,
because you’d think I’d hear something snapping and a tire being punctured. Maybe it broke just as I parked Friday night,
and there was a slow leak with the slice happening when I pulled out on
Saturday. Who knows.
Anyway, I soon had the
small spare on, and set off to the Sears Auto Center about a quarter mile from
the theater. My friend followed me in
case something happened, but I made it safely to the store. I then spent an hour or more – on my day off –
waiting for my car to be fixed.
Sometime that week –
possibly even on Tuesday – after work I went to the Walmart near where I worked
for a lug wrench. I can’t remember why I
didn’t just get one at Sears. Probably I
just wanted to be done with it all, and didn’t think about getting my own lug
wrench until I got home. I think I had
to walk down an aisle two or three times before I finally saw them on the bottom
shelf. I bought one, walked out to the
parking lot, and threw it in my trunk.
I was about to say that I
haven’t used it, but one time two or three years later, I was going to the apartment
of the woman I was dating at the time, and as I drove along I thought something
wasn’t right. I pulled over and found
one of my tires was flat. I’m pretty
sure it was on the left side, but I don’t remember which one. I was soon able to get the spare on, and I
think where I pulled over was within sight of the Sears Auto Center, so I went
and got my tire fixed. I think I just
picked up a nail or something somewhere, so it wasn’t a huge deal. Though it did ruin date night.
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