the flat tire
so when i tell you that we had a flat tire yesterday, you might be inspired to gasp. after all, it was -12°, with a wind chill of -38°.
but, really, if you have to get a flat tire, it was the best possible flat you could get.
i noticed the car was riding funny just as we left the driveway. sure enough, the front passenger tire was visibly low. after a brief conversation about whether it was safe to drive on ("i don't know. what do you think?" "i don't know. might as well."), we went down the hill to the tire store and asked them to repair it. twenty minutes later, we were good to go — for free, since we'd bought the tire there.
i wasn't even annoyed, because i was well aware of the numerous ways it could have been worse.
we weren't stranded on the side of the road somewhere — i'd detected it before we got that far.
we weren't struggling in the arctic cold to change it ourselves — which i would have felt honor-bound to try, before inevitably giving up and calling aaa.
we didn't have to wait for days — the tire people had us in and out very quickly.
the tire wasn't even damaged — it had simply slipped off the rim when we hit a bit of leftover car from an accident on the highway.
and getting it fixed was free!
i'll tell you, that flat tire made me happy. even at the time i was thoroughly aware of how bad it could have been, aware that we got off easy.
hey, you take your happiness where you find it.
Comments
Mark has a very similar story, where the positive outcome hinges on the decisions he made within the last 24 hours before the truck decided to act up (coincidentally retrieving needed tools/equipment to fix said truck from my garage mere hours before it broke down, having it break down right as he got back to his house, etc.)
Ironically enough, we were just talking about his overall Pollyanna outlook on life (his words, not mine) this morning. I think you two are twins...
Posted by: betsy | January 17, 2004 11:45 PM