Changing a Tire
Changing a tire is, I guess, one of those life skills that are handy to have as an adult—like poaching an egg or avoiding someone you don’t want to see out in public.
After a long weekend in Montreal, we returned to the garage where my friend had parked the car and found it with a flat. So, we unearthed the spare. All our stuff was on the ground. The trunk was empty. Hey, do you have a jack, though? I asked.
No, we didn’t—and come to mention it, when Miles borrowed the car once, he’d had this problem then, too. Ah, well then. More underrated is the ability to face mild adversity with some aplomb.
I got another chance to break out my IN CASE OF EMERGENCY limited French language skills with the guy from CAA (the Canadian triple-A — ahh right, “C,” we all muttered in recognition), who’d responded quite speedily to our call, I must add.
My brain could not surface the words for flat tire, so I went with pneu est mort. Later, one of my friends told me that while she didn’t know exactly what I was saying, she knew me well enough to know, from the way I’d said it, it wasn’t quite right. It was nice to be on the one hand barely comprehensible and, on the other, understood.
There were several hours when we weren’t sure if the garage would be able to repair the tire or if it would have to be replaced. A text is good, a call is bad, said Julie, who worked the front desk. A video for the garage played on the TV behind her as we talked. That’s you! my friend said, excited, when Julie also appeared on the screen. Yes, yes, it’s me, Julie replied, a little sheepishly, Here I am.
Later, Julie called to follow up on the text I somehow hadn’t received. It’s Julie from Pneus Papineau, the place where you left your Prius, she said, like maybe we’d forgotten or decided to give up on the idea of “car” entirely.
A straightforward diagnosis: THERE WAS A NAIL, the invoice read. No one wanted to unpack the car in the rain to get the donut back in the proper spot, so we rode with it in a trash bag in the backseat, a situation we worried might raise some alarm at the border but in the end, went unnoticed—or at least unremarked upon—and we continued home.
Hey, how do you say “flat tire,” anyways? my friend asked at the garage. Pneu crevé, the guy told us, and we all practiced it together a few times before we left.