Yesterday, I did not have a car accident: What I hit, I hit on purpose.
I was on the highway when the truck in front of me dropped a large chunk of metal on the pavement, the way a horse will decorate a trail while still moving.
I immediately took defensive measures, preventing injury to the car by tightening my stomach muscles. I hit the brakes, at the same time calmly alerting the other passengers to the potential danger by announcing “Yahhh-gahhhhh!” The other passengers, who turned out to be my cellphone, threw itself onto the floorboards.
I didn’t actually have to run over the truck poop — I could have swerved to my left, obliterating a Chevy with two women wearing hats that were decorated with what looked like cherries, or to my right, smashing into a minivan carrying a baby girl who was tossing food at her mother’s hair. So it was my choice to hit the bouncing, grenade-like object, though as soon as I did so, I began to have regrets: Do we really need so many women wearing fruity hats?
My car is engineered to take such an impact and safely convert it into repair expenses. Immediately my dashboard lit up with little indicator lights shaped like dollar signs. I steered over to the shoulder, got out and saw that my right front tire had experienced what economists call “negative growth.”
When my daughters were learning to drive, I painstakingly walked them through the steps for changing a tire, which they dutifully recorded in their notes as, “Step 1: Call Dad.” Unfortunately for me, my father lives more than 1,200 miles away, so I pulled out my spare tire, a frail, tubercular wheel that looked as if a real tire had spent an entire season on “The Biggest Loser.”
The people who designed my car assumed that anyone stupid enough to run over a 4-pound chunk of metal probably couldn’t read, so all of the instructions for operating the car jack were done in the same kind of cartoons they use on those cards that teach you how to safely get off an airplane if you’re ever flying with Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger. I frowned at the illustrations — the first one looked as if it were instructing me to defeather a pigeon.
Luckily, I’m a man, so I don’t need to read no stinkin’ instructions. I ignored the cartoons, got out the jack, inserted the jack handle and began pumping, to no effect whatsoever. I’m a man, so I kept at it for about five minutes.
OK, back to the cartoons. Upon closer examination, the pigeon wasn’t a pigeon at all, it was a walrus.
I watched bitterly as car after car whizzed insouciantly past. Every third vehicle was driven by an old lady in a hat. I had risked my life to save their species — why didn’t one of them stop to offer help, feed me cherries or something?
I called my mechanic, Melvin Walletdrainer, to complain that the tire he sold me was defectively incapable of rolling over a jagged chunk of metal at highway speeds.
“You want me to send a tow truck, since you can’t figure out how to use the jack?” he asked.
“No,” I responded sharply, insulted that he would so easily guess what I wanted. “I didn’t say that I can’t figure it out, I said that the cartoons are drawn in German.”
“I don’t mind sending a tow. It would only cost $12 gazillion,” he responded.
Actually, he didn’t say that at all, but I’ve dealt with Melvin a long time, and that’s what everything always costs. I told him I’d take care of it, and he said he’d order a replacement tire. My tires apparently come from special rubber trees that are massaged with cocoa butter every night before they are read a story and put to bed, so Melvin doesn’t ever have them in stock.
I hung up, faced the car jack and, using my superior mechanical capabilities, called road service. The driver very efficiently changed the tire while I stood around and talked hunting and sports to prove I was as manly as she was.
Melvin was glad to see me.
Contact W. Bruce Cameron at . For his previous columns, visit .
