I noticed a short time back there was a tire on my car that was going out of round. I managed to drag this out and limp around as long as possible. Last week I was on an errand and noticed the thump-thump-THUMP-thump was even worse. I stopped between here and there and added air. When I got back home I noticed the front tire was contorted to an alarming state. Heat some plastic and torque it between your hands. My tire looked like that, which is, to say the least, troubling.
So I went to the tire place today. I put a little air in hoping that it would at least help get me close to the shop, which is about four miles from our home. Just before I arrived there the thump-thump-THUMP-thump returned to pre-front-tire-deformity levels. When I got out the front tire looked fine.
The guy at the counter, the kind of guy who speaks low and fast and is hard to understand over the noise of a room and has an odd beard and gives you a general uneasy feeling to start with, assures me that tire is probably fine because there are two pieces of rubber and they blah blah blah.
I don’t know that much about tires, but I have seen round rubber on vehicles my entire life and I can say these two things: 1. round is the optimal shape and 2. a bad tire doesn’t become good. With this wisdom in mind what he said didn’t carry that much weight, but, he said, they’d put the car on the rack and do their thing and so on. It was agreed that I would return this afternoon for the car.
So we went to Montgomery. We returned. We had lunch at Byron’s with a friend. I told the story about how, when Byron’s used to be a Dairy Queen they one day found themselves out of ice cream. I told the lady that day she should lock up and go home. No one goes to Dairy Queen for the chicken fingers, after all. Today Byron’s was out of chicken. Always something. (I had a vegetable plate and it was good.)
The Yankee isn’t feeling so well, so we went to pick up her bike which now features a shiny new derailleur and, presumably, no more shifting problems. (Which would be a change for her.) We stopped at the house for a bit and then headed out to fetch my car.
It had been moved, but the two guys working, earnest, confident men who gave you the impression of knowing what they were doing, said they had no idea what was going on with my car.
I’ll just skip ahead here to the point where I closed my eyes and was mentally, actually, really, counting to 10. I pointed out they seemed to have some sort of communications breakdown between the morning crew and the afternoon crew. They pointed out how much the tires were going to cost me and I was going to get my car fixed. I would be the last one of the day. I apologized for that, hoping it wouldn’t keep them there late, but also making the joke that I hope they did it right because, you know, the guy has PTA or a softball game or what have you.
And then this man decides to play the age game. I was just thinking to myself the other day, You know, no one has played the age game in a long time. Maybe you’ve outgrown that sort of thing.
This guy who, and I get it, took a bit of exception to my do it right joke, says “I bet I’m older than you. How old are you?”
Really?
So I told him. And he told me how old he was, which was meant to be some sort of prima facie evidence that he does his work right. The general utility of his morning colleagues aside, I had no reason to doubt this. The urge to play the age game notwithstanding, I am not qualified to comment on this man’s dedication and pride in his work. I couldn’t bring myself to point out that plenty of people who have a decade or so on me are perfectly capable of doing a lousy job, but I’d already counted to 10 and this guy wanted to put two tires on my car and go home. What’s more, he looked great for his age. So I apologized for my joke and we laughed about it.
Half an hour later I got my car back — I wandered around the store and tried to not look bored — and the tires feel great. That gentleman knows his craft, and I hope he hit a triple or really proved a great point in his parent-teacher meeting.
And that he told them he was 47 while he did it.
