The Good Samaritan Strikes Again

This morning I had a flat tire. Some people might have been a bit upset about this, but I thought it was raaaaad. Woohoo, I get to change a tire, I actually get to do something real this morning instead of sitting in class talking about what other people have done! Granted changing a tire isn't going to change the world, but that really wasn't the point. With great enthusiasm I pulled into the nearest gas station and excitedly began uncovering the floor panel that hides the spare tire marked 'for temporary use only'. Awesome, I hauled that sucker out, now to find the jack. Uh-oh, a good Samaritan is approaching, and I know what's coming.

"Excuse me, do you need some help?"

"Uh, no thanks, I think I'm fine" I smiled and went back to searching the back of my car.

"It's no problem, just let me run my car through the car wash and I"ll come back and change your tire for you. Just 5 minutes, give me 5 minutes." I had flashbacks to a scary cab ride in London at the mention of 'just 5 minutes', but that's a whole different story.

"No really, I think I can handle it, but if you want to come back after your car wash to make sure I haven't done anything egregiously wrong, that would be wonderful" I smiled sweetly.

Somehow by this point he'd managed to nudge me out from behind the back of my car and was now rummaging around looking for my jack. "Ah, here it is!"

Dammit Dammit Dammit!

Now the gas station attendant comes walking over.

"Flat tire?" he asks?

"Yup" I reply flatly, thinking 'Way to state the obvious, Buddy'

Now I'm standing there watching two grown men pretending to be on a racecar pit crew, feeling like a kid let loose in a candy store only to discover all the treats are vomit flavored Bertie Botts jelly beans. I'd been sooooo looking forward to changing the tire myself, so I was frantically trying to think of a way to make them leave. For a split second I thought of grabbing the black feather boa that had been sitting in the back of my car for ages and garroting the well dressed man, thinking it would scare away the gas station attendant and leave me a small window of time to change the tire before the police showed up. I quickly dismissed the idea because 1) That would be a horrible way to repay their kindness and 2) A flat tire just isn't worth going to jail for.

The well dressed man worked quickly and adeptly while the gas station attendant hovered around him giving him advice and cheering him on. I stood off to the side trying not to look crestfallen and feeling guilty because I was not more grateful.

Within 5 minutes the tire is changed and the well dressed man stands up with a very pleased look on his face. Several things ran through my head at that point, it should have been me standing up with a very pleased look on my face, how many tires would I have to change before I would be able to get it done that quickly, and how would I ever be able to change them when no one ever lets me get past the point of getting the spare tire out of the back of the car.

"Boy, that almost really sucked for you! And you didn't even have to get your hands dirty!" he said

I thanked him, as I looked down at my hands, made dirty from wresting the spare tire from out of the back of the car thinking about how much fun it would have been to play with the jack and the lugnuts. Seriously, it's just fun to say the word 'lugnuts' let alone getting to play with them. And getting to jack the car up is the closest I'm ever going to get to possessing super human strength. I"m a ninja, not a superhero after all.

I know this sounds like I'm ungrateful, but that's really not the case. It's nice to know that chivalry is not dead, and that there are still people out there that will stop to help complete strangers, but why didn't they let me play too? I think I'm just going to keep a set of overalls in the back of the car from now on, so the next time I get a flat tire I can put them on and maybe if I pretend hard enough the good Samaritans will let me be on the pit crew with them.