The Flip Side

I think I have more than my fair share of amazing, supportive people in my life. Super-Roger and Wonder-Dawna are two of them. It would be tough to delineate all the ways these two have supported me, even before the cancer diagnosis. Mostly this fall, actually, they've loaned me one of their cars at key moments while my car has taken the time to have a series of irritating problems.

On Saturday, I pulled out of my driveway with some difficulty and realised that I was also driving down the road with more than the usual difficulty, so I turned around and went back home and discovered that my back left tyre was flat.

It did not escape me, as I wrestled with the jack, that I had been so proud of myself last year at learning to change a tyre. But, I thought a little bitterly, it's one thing to be able to change a tyre and something else to have to--apparently once a year, and always in the dead of winter. Brrr! Fortunately an out-for-a-walk neighbour stopped and helped me finish the job. (This is a bit remarkable in itself, as I don't live in a particularly friendly neighbourhood--nor, I regret to say, do I do anything to change this.)

I noted, as I drove to work on the doughnut, that I was having a lot more trouble driving with it than usual, and that things were still feeling very bumpy. My suspicions grew and grew until I got to Starbucks, got out of my car, walked around to the other side and discovered that yes! That back tyre was flat, too!

I was not in a very good mood as I began my shift. Nor through most of the rest of it.

On a break, I quickly called Super-Roger to see if I could borrow his car again for the weekend if I could get a ride back to my town. Then I called the Milk Guy to see if he would give me the ride.

In the end, what happened, though, was that both these men decided to try to come bail me out themselves. They arrived within minutes of each other (and about half an hour before I left work), such that the Milk Guy was already removing the back wheels from my car when Super-Roger got there. Together they took the wheels to a local tyre shop, convinced the employees to stay open long enough for them to get me two new tyres, returned to my car and reassembled it, reinflated my front tyres, and I was able to return home safely--and a lot quicker than I had made it to the city that morning . . .

I daresay all three of us could have done without my tyre problems. But . . . I like my friends to meet my friends, and sometimes you can't very well orchestrate these things. I don't know that Super-Roger and the Milk Guy would have met under other, more ordinary circumstances. But I'm glad that they did.