...and the first thing I do is back the car over a log in the driveway and get a flat on my way to play tennis with a partner I barely know. Fortunately, I do know her name, find her in the phone book and catch her just as she's leaving her house to meet me. I tell her our session is off and she immediately suggests driving out to where I live and changing the tire for me, an offer I am not about to refuse. I tell her where I live - four miles out of town - and am thankful I know enough to be able to get the spare out of its hiding place in the cargo compartment of the Volvo before she arrives.
I left the car on a slope in the driveway as soon as I realized what had happened, and the first thing she suggests is driving it onto level ground. I do that, and watch while she finds the right place to hook in the jack and starts to raise the car. You need to loosen the lug nuts while the wheel's still on the ground, she says, as if you do it when the wheel's in the air it will just spin and make getting them off much harder. I nod sagely, scarcely able to believe my good fortune.
Suddenly the jack collapses and the wheel is back on the ground. B says it's all her fault for not putting bricks in front of the front wheels and for placing the jack on gravel. The paving stones I bought two months ago for landscaping are still where I put them when I took them out of the car, and we put two in front of each of the front wheels. I suggest looking for a bit of old wood to put the jack on, but B says clearing away the gravel will be enough. It is, except now the jack is bent and no longer fits. B goes to get hers from her Suburu and lo and behold, it works. "We" - me wearing the white gloves that so help me God are in the tool kit of the Volvo and B doing all the work with bare hands - get the punctured wheel off and try to fit the spare on to the lug nuts.
No go. How can I have a spare that doesn't fit? I have no answer to this, but it doesn't, so I go into the house to call Triple A. While they're telling me all they can do is tow me somewhere where I can get a new tire, B yells from outside that she's sussed it and I hang up. There's a little spoke that sticks out and a corresponding hole on the spare that needs to be aligned before it will fit. Spare tire and tennis practice are on, and now I know how to fix a flat.
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