So on Monday I found out that my car needed extensive repairs, so much so that my wife and I decided that we needed to find another car. We checked out the car lots that night and Tuesday morning bought a car. Now before I let my old car go, I wanted the car radio I bought at Best Buy to be taken out so I could put it in my newer car.

So I hop onto the four lane highway near my house and quickly see a car just pulling over on a bridge. I see a blonde girl get out, and she appears to be alone, so I decide to pull over and see if she needs help. Now there's not much of a shoulder on this bridge, but I put my hazard lights on and slowly backed up til I got close to her car. She practically runs up to my car, I roll down the passenger window and she says "Oh my god, what the f*** happened?! What was that?" I said that I'd take a look, and I should say that I know very little about things automotive. Even so, I quickly determined that her tire had, well, exploded. I'm not sure how it happened, but there were three big blown out spots on the tread.

She asks if I have a phone, I told her I did and handed it to her. I thought I'd grab my emergency triangle out of my trunk and put it up to get a little more attention from the on-coming traffic speeding by at 60 MPH, so hopefully they won't kill either of us. I open my trunk and discover, I'd already moved my car kit to the newer car! No flares or triangle today!

So this girl, I'm guessing she's 18 or 19, is talking to her mom on my phone. It seems her mom is not sympathetic to her plight and is unwilling to assist in any way. The girl hangs up and says she's going to call someone else. I say that I'm going to make a call first and call 411 so I can get the non-emergency police number...yeah, I'm thinking I need to program that one in my phone. So I'm being connected, and the girl figures out who I'm calling and she says excitedly, "I don't have insurance!" which is required in this state. "And I just got busted for public intox last night." Now I'm thinking I would have felt a whole lot better with a police car with bright flashing lights behind us to alert other drivers of our presense, but I hung up my phone before the call went through. I asked if she had a spare, and she said that she did. She grabbed the doughnut out of her trunk and then was worried because she said, "I don't have a jack."

I looked in her trunk and said, "yes you do, it's right here" and pulled it out.

I decided if I was going to change a tire for this girl, I'd better put my car behind hers and a little bit in the lane of traffic to encourage other drivers to give us a wider berth. I forgot to mention that I had to tell this girl that it would be a good idea to turn on her hazard lights.

I figure out how her jack works and place it and crank it up to where it is snug under the car. I started loosening the lug nuts and she queries, "Don't you need to have the car higher up?" I explain to her that if I tried to loosen the lugs with the wheel in the air that the tire would just spin. During this process she asks me if I have a cigarette in my car, because she was on her way to buy cigarettes...no luck for her because I don't smoke.

I get the doughnut on and start cranking the jack down. She had put the blown tire in the trunk by this point. I gave her the jack and then noticed something that could only have happened during a fiasco like this...the doughnut was practically flat! I had already explained to her that she needed to drive about 45 MPH when using the doughnut, and while I was busy sweating her spare on her car she had called someone else and arranged to meet them at a place about 10 miles from where we were.

When we saw that the doughnut for all practical purposes was flat, I asked if she needed a ride somewhere. She said, "well, I'm not leaving my car here, I don't have any insurance." She assured me that she was going to drive really slow. I suggested that it would be a bad idea to drive, especially so far, with a flat tire. I said she would certainly ruin the spare and probably cause expensive damage to the axle. I suggested that she could have the car towed, but she said she didn't have money for that.

I was running out of suggestions when I remembered the two cheapo air compressers that plug into a cigarette lighter that I had bought on clearence at Wal Mart a few months back and forgotten about. Luck was with me, because they were still shoved in the back of my trunk. I asked her if her cigarette lighter in the car worked...of course it didn't!

So I pull my car into the lane of traffic and park right beside her car...luckily the cord on the compresser was long enough to reach from my car to her tire. I hooked it up and let it rip. At first I didn't think it was working, but slowly the built in gauge began to rise up to the PSI recommended on the tire. I packed up and suggested that she get the doughnut checked by a professional right away and get a new tire as soon as possible. I also suggested that she learn how to change a tire and to quit smoking because she was too pretty to have such an ugly habit.

She had thanked me a few times during the whole process, but I don't really think she understood how much of her butt I actually saved today.

No phone, no clue how to change a tire, no insurance...and yet I don't think she understood the situation.

The thing that went through my mind was that line from "A Streetcar Named Desire"...

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

She didn't even ask my name...

So I was telling my wife the story and asked her if she knows how to change a tire (no, I really didn't know before today). She said, "No, and I don't need to know because I've got AAA!" I told her that AAA wasn't always going to be there and she swore up and down that she didn't need to know and she refused to learn. She's pregnant, and quite honestly has been a little more irrational than usual lately. I'm hoping I can convince her to learn...maybe after this baby. If not, I'll just put detailed instructions, maybe on Rite in Rain computer paper, and put it in a sheet protector with the spare tire. Give her a little help at least.

So that's my story of why I weep for the future.