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You got a flat, you got to fix it yourself

You got a flat tire, you got to fix it, you got to do it yourself. You got to pull over, you need to look in the trunk, you know, assuming it’s a standard car, by which I mean, there should be a false bottom, like pull at the bottom of the trunk, OK, that’s usually not the real bottom, there’s another bottom, underneath, that’s where the spare is going to be. It’s usually just a donut, like a smaller tire. Don’t worry, it fits.

When I was in high school, I ran on a flat tire for like a whole day. The car still drove, I just couldn’t figure out why it insisted on drifting to the left. I figured it was a steering problem, like maybe I needed to get a new steering wheel or something. And I know you think that sounds ridiculous, a steering wheel problem, but it could have been true, because in high school I wanted a cool car so badly, and I didn’t know any better, I thought this meant like buying a pair of fuzzy dice for the mirror.

I bought this Knight Rider style steering wheel, it was like a video game steering wheel, it only had grips on the sides. I bought this thing on eBay, and I had no idea how to install stuff, so I asked my friend Nick, his cousin worked at a Best Buy garage, he assured me he knew how to install it. And I was a little skeptical, because I had previously used Nick’s services to install a CD player in the dash. It didn’t really fit right, like there was a huge gap in between the hardware and the car fixture, CDs would always get lost in that hole, but what could I do, he handed me the keys and he was like, “All right, she’s good to go. Two hundred bucks.”

And while I didn’t want to use Nick again, I could just imagine me going to a real auto garage, I’d walk in there with my novelty steering wheel, the mechanic’s face would be like trying not to laugh, like sure, I guess I should take this kid’s money. But are his parent’s going to get pissed off at me? Is this wheel even legal? At least Nick was somewhat closer to my age, and his car was totally tricked out, neon lights underneath, fuzzy dice hanging from his fuzzy dice.

I showed him the steering wheel and he was just like, “Sweet. I can do that. Two hundred bucks.” And he did it, it steered, although I couldn’t figure out which button was the horn, or maybe they were all supposed to activate the horn, and he just couldn’t get the connection right, I don’t know.

But when I got this flat tire, it just naturally occurred to me that it was a steering issue, that all I needed to do was to pull to the right, almost dramatically, and since there was no top to this wheel, you know, what this steering wheel added in coolness it definitely lacked in usability, I had to twist my arms uncomfortably to the other side. So pull, turn, and just a little heavier on the gas, and the car seemed to be driving fine.

Of course, it wasn’t fine, the front left tire was completely flat. But I didn’t know that’s why people were honking at me. I don’t know, and I couldn’t honk back, because, like I said before, no working horn, but eventually this one guy got my attention, he mouthed it out for me, “Flat! Tire!” and I pulled over.

I’d never changed a tire before, so there was a lot of trial and error, like you know that trick where you take off the screws before you jack it up? Yeah, I had no idea, the wheel just kept spinning as I tried to loosen the lug nuts. And that jack, I didn’t know there was like a certain spot. Whatever, this is all pretty basic stuff.

I got the donut on, I rode that thing way past its hundred mile suggested use. Finally my parents got on my case, “Get a real tire, now!” but I didn’t feel like digging into the comic book fund, so I went to some junkyard and bought an old one for like twenty-five bucks. Nick told me he knew how to do tires, but the two hundred dollar price tag was the opposite of what I was trying to do here, not spend any money.

So sometimes you just got to get dirty, you got to change your own tires, figure out yourself how those things get weighed. I’ve done it, I’ve been there man.

What? You have a Jeep? I don’t know, isn’t it on the outside of the back door. Yeah, the tire shaped covering with the “These Colors Don’t Run” graphic, yeah, that’s the spare. You have Triple A? You do? So what are you calling me for? You really want to hear stupid stories about my car from high school? Just call them up, that’s what you’re paying them for, I mean, you could do it, but they’re pros, they’ll have that thing changed in like two or three minutes.

Three showers, three pairs of jeans

I’m having one of those days where I can’t get comfortable, like I got dressed in the morning, but my jeans, I don’t know how to explain it, they just felt greasy, and I’m not a dirty guy, I wash my clothes somewhat regularly. Shirts, totally, I only wear them once, and jeans, even though I get multiple days in between each wash, I’m not one of those people that goes a whole season without washing. I’d say once a week, two weeks, tops. But still, these were like especially grimy, I don’t know, so I took them off and put on a clean pair.

But I still didn’t feel right, I tried ignoring it, but an hour, two hours in, I figured, all right, you know what? I can’t let this go, for whatever reason today I just can’t get comfortable in my pants, I took those pants off, I hopped in the shower, even though I had just taken a shower, I needed a clean start, another fresh start to the day, even though it was coming up on lunchtime.

And this shower, I usually don’t take two showers so close to each other, but it was so comfortable, maybe it’s because the seasons have recently changed, we’re getting our first few really crisp days of the season, like not cold enough to warrant a coat or anything like that, but definitely a sweatshirt. Heat? I don’t know, I don’t know if the heating has kicked in yet. Although, now that I mention it, I think I was supposed to get the furnace serviced. I think.

I was thinking all of that in the shower, and it just felt so good, like a sauna, I lost track of time, when I got out, my skin was raw, and when I found a third pair of jeans, these ones absolutely clean, they just chafed against my legs, it was really itchy, a violent, persistent itch that, not even five seconds after I stopped itching it, it would start up again, I just kept sitting there and squirming.

So, and I never do this, because I’m just not in the habit of doing it, but I got undressed and I started applying my wife’s moisturizing lotion, like a lot of it, by the pumpful, this stuff comes in these giant, I’m talking big dispensers, like you’re totally supposed to use a lot of it each time, and it felt great, finally the itching subsided a little bit, cool relief against my over-washed skin. I thought to myself, I don’t know why I don’t use this stuff more often. I guess, yeah, there’s a little bit of a stigma, like it’s a girly thing, a daily moisturizer. But so what? What am I that bound by ridiculous gender distinctions, that I can’t use a product that’s clearly doing something right here?

But then I got dressed, I put on my clothes and everything felt grimy again. Was it the lotion? Because, yeah, I’d expected there to be some lotion residue, but this, I couldn’t imagine it had been this bad before. I tried to put it out of my head, that whatever slimy sort of sensation I was feeling under my jeans, whatever, it was a hundred percent clean, just clean skin and fresh moisturizer.

Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about it for more than five minutes or so. But what can I do, I mean, a third shower is out of the question, that would be such a short-term fix, because I can’t handle any more hot water, not today, I’ve got to let my skin rest, replenish some of those natural oils or whatever. But a third shower, I probably should have thought out my day a little better. I wanted to go running, but, you know, I’d need to take a shower after, so I probably shouldn’t.

So I don’t know, I think I’m just going to stay in for the rest of the day, I could probably get away with not doing anything, in which case, I guess I could just take a really quick third shower, I’ll change right into my pajamas after. Do you think this is going to count as a sick day or a personal day? Because, it’s definitely something physical, right? Or am I worrying about it too much, in which case it would be mental? If I get a doctor’s note, am I going to have to go to a dermatologist? Do I need a referral from my primary care physician? Shit, do I have to get dressed again? I can’t get a grip on the day, I’m just, I can’t get my shit figured out.

New hundreds

They just updated the hundred-dollar bill. It’s got this holographic strip on the front, Ben Franklin’s profile is a little bigger, and on the back there is a giant 100 printed at the end. I hadn’t heard that the hundred was getting a makeover, but I never hear about these things. When new currency is rolled out, it’s like it’s done all at once, there’s never any forewarning.

One day it’s old hundreds, and the next day I’m at work and someone pays in cash, and I see the new hundred, I immediately recognize it as something different, but I don’t question it, I’m not like calling out to my boss, “Hey boss, is this a new hundred? Is this a real thing?” no, he’d be like, “Rob, please don’t waste any more of my time than you have to, OK?”

I just think it’s crazy because, what’s stopping someone else from making their own new hundreds? You know, besides federal laws and stuff. I’m just saying, if you’re going to make counterfeit bills, wouldn’t it make more sense to make up an entirely new design and then hope that people like me simply won’t question anything?

And then the next day, I see more new hundreds, every time one of my coworkers gets a new bill, they’re like, “Oh my God, a new hundred. Did you see this?” and in my head I’m thinking, do you really have to announce that? Who are you talking to? But then I remember my reaction the first time I saw one, I think it was identical, I held it up for whoever happened to be standing next to me and I was like, “Ooh, look at this.”

How much longer is paper currency going to be a thing? Don’t get me wrong, nothing in life feels better than having a gigantic wad of rolled up cash bulging out of your front pocket, but I can’t really foresee where it’s all going to go. I’m talking, each upgrade in bills has featured some cool new technology. When I was a little kid, it was those cotton strips only visible when held up to the light. Then watermarks, gold foil, now holograms.

Why the need to keep changing the money every few years? I’m guessing that it’s all an effort to stop counterfeiting. Which, since the US dollar is basically the global currency, it’s got to be like the Holy Grail for every nefarious criminal operation. As sophisticated technology becomes more and more accessible to everyone else, you’ve got to think that eventually the Treasury is going to throw its hand up in the air and admit defeat.

And what are they changing, really? It’s all minor, cosmetic details. I say, if you’re going to change the money, we should like really change it, get all of those old Presidents and whatever Ben Franklin and Alexander Hamilton were and replace them with some fresh faces. Obviously the Republicans are going to want to put Reagan on everything. They’re still pissed off that FDR got the dime.

But what about maybe some novelty currency? I remember when the second Fantastic Four movie came out, some marketing company got in trouble for making a bunch of quarters with the Silver Surfer on the back. You can check them out on Ebay, I think they regularly fetch pretty high bids. But why does it have to be mostly Founding Fathers? Maybe we could put Bryan Cranston on something, you know, to commemorate the last time that our country was united over anything, in this case, everybody loved Breaking Bad. And then we could put Walt Jr. on the nickel, Hank would definitely make a great limited edition fifty-cent piece.

Nah, let’s just wait, fifty years from now, it’s definitely going to be Obama. Who do you think is going to lose their spot? If I had to guess, I’d say Andrew Jackson. That guy is always looked to as a badass, but more and more, history is showing us that he was super racist and a little too bloodthirsty.

Finally, every time they introduce new money, it always starts its way with the hundred, then trickles down to the fifty, the twenty, the ten, the five, and then nothing. Come on, don’t you think it’s about time we had a new one dollar bill? It’s the odd man out here. You never see old fives or tens anymore, but every single dollar bill looks like it’s out of a time machine. Maybe the cost isn’t worth the trouble, but I say, let’s just do it, let’s make a new one-dollar bill. And let’s put Obama on that one also.

A good pair of wool socks

I went hiking with a few guys from work last winter. It would have been a great day, but I couldn’t keep my toes warm, and so try as I did to just enjoy myself, the weather, the outdoors, being with my friends, I couldn’t shake the feeling that way down, at the lowest point of my physical being, there was this little area that not only refused to be warm, but it denied comfort to the rest of my body.

My torso was fine. The hat on my head kept everything on top nice and toasty. But my toes sent dramatic distress signals ringing throughout the entire system, “Help! We’re freezing! It’s so cold down here! You’ve got to do something about it! You’ve got to help us out! No time to focus on anything else but right down here! Cold! Cold! Cold!”

And finally I couldn’t take it, I had to stop for a second, I told the group, “Guys, I need a minute, my toes are freezing, I’ve got to warm them up,” and, naturally, everyone stopped, but they kind of looked around at each other, like seriously? This guy’s going to sit here and, what, start undressing because his toes are cold?

And I could tell what they were thinking, so I needed to find a way to get the attention off of me, I asked my friend Doug, “Doug, your feet aren’t freezing? I don’t know what I’m doing wrong here. My boots are waterproof, not that it’s raining, but still, it’s just that, I have two pairs of socks.”

My other friend Pete fielded the question, “Two pairs of socks? You’ve got them both on at the same time?” I nodded. “That’s your problem right there, your feet can’t breathe. We’re doing all of this walking, your feet start to overheat, they sweat, and that sweat starts to get cold. It’s a temperature drop spiraling out of control, and those waterproof boots probably aren’t helping, no ventilation, it’s like a greenhouse in there, but one that’s not at all strong enough to withstand the outside temperature.”

That was a lot that he just said, and I really badly wanted to counter with something, anything, because, first of all, I was asking Doug, and yeah, I did pick Doug kind of randomly, but Pete could have at least let Doug fumble around a little bit, a, “Yeah … I don’t know …” before butting in like a know-it-all. If Doug didn’t have an immediate answer, at least I wouldn’t have looked like I’m the only one not knowing what he was doing. But now, Pete, calling me out on the double socks.

That was only the beginning, “And what do you have there, cotton socks? Wool?” Was this a trick question? “Cotton,” I answered, and I should have said something else, I should have thrown him a curveball, like synthetic, but I didn’t, and Pete would’ve probably been able to tell anyway, this guy apparently knows everything there is to know about socks, he was shaking his head, “No, nope, nope, you gotta have wool socks. The cotton, all it does is absorb the sweat. That’s not going to happen with wool.”

Then he kind of turned around to address the group, like he was giving a lecture, a sock symposium, “I’m telling you guys, all I have is one pair of good wool socks, and I’m fine, my toes are really warm.” And everyone else just nodded in agreement, meanwhile I was sitting on some log, undoing the knots in my boots. “Easy Rob,” Pete was still on a roll here, “I know your toes must be really cold but don’t take your boots off. It’s much colder outside, even though it doesn’t feel like it. And even if you do manage to warm up your feet with your hands, it’s going to be even worse when you have to put them back inside those damp cotton athletic socks you have there.”

Couldn’t he just drop it? Did he really have to throw in the word “athletic” socks? Hiking is athletic. You need a little bit of athleticism, right, to hike? “Actually,” Pete continued, “I think I have an extra pair of wool socks in my bag,” and that was all I needed, I took off my boots, yes, it was a lot colder out in the air, I couldn’t believe it. But I started massaging my bare feet, I don’t know if it felt good, because my feet were so cold, it was like they were transferring that chill to my hands. Were my hands going to be cold now?

“Ooh, sorry buddy, I must have left them at home. Well, let’s get going, we’ve got a lot more trail to cover.” And everybody started walking ahead, I had to put the wet socks back on, they had accumulated a slight layer of frost after having been laid out beside me. It was miserable. I don’t know why Pete couldn’t have sent out an email the night before, “Hey guys! Since I know everything there is to know about socks, I figured I’d pass along some friendly advice: get a good pair of wool socks!” would that have been too much? A text message? Something?

Four extra-large sodas

And I was like, “Just try to stay out of my way, OK?” which, yeah, it sounded a lot cooler in my head, I was going for the whole, “I got this,” or at a more basic level, “Don’t worry, don’t have any doubts in me,” but it came out the way it came out, arrogant, dismissive. It was too late for an apology, it would have killed the momentum, totally destroyed whatever we’d already set up for ourselves, the mood, the false determination.

A week earlier, my friend Rich had showed me this video online of two guys ordering four extra-large sodas at a drive-thru, and right as the cashier handed them their drinks, the driver threw the oversized containers back through the window. All you heard was the scream, she must have gotten soaked, followed by the crazy laughter of the two guys in the car as it sped away.

I remember laughing so hard at that video, the insane kind of funny that, looking back now, I’d never laugh, I’d never let myself. It’s too mean. I’d feel automatically too bad for that woman, she probably hates her job, or maybe she doesn’t hate her job, maybe it’s just me, I hate my job and I assume everybody else hates their job also. Maybe she’s happy. But she’s working the window at the drive through, she gets out the XL cups, fills them all up.

And then what does her boss say? The manager hears the spill, he looks up and the window-girl is doused in soda, there’s a mess everywhere. Did the computer get wet? What about the register? Did the soda make it to the cash? It’s everywhere. She feels bad, like even though everyone says they believe her, she’s worried some of them might suspect she’s making it all up. Because seriously, who would do something like this? And why?

But back when I was seventeen, when I finally had a car, independence, those were things I wasn’t focusing on, the who, the why. My whole world was all of the sudden open and new, I got such a crazy thrill out of anything I hadn’t been exposed to before. And this act summed up everything that I wanted in life at that moment, the ability to look around at the most mundane of situations and still be thrown for a total loop, like nothing applies anymore, everything you thought you knew, forget it.

I think Rich might have suggested we try it out also, or maybe he didn’t directly suggest it, but he said something like, “We would never do something like that,” just something to say, but I took it as this personal challenge, I was like, “Well, I would do that,” not even thinking about how this was already escalating dangerously. “No way, you would never do that,” so now here I was, Rich had thrust all responsibility my way, now this was my joke, my prank, my wild act to either carry out or chicken out of.

So we went to Taco Bell. My euphoria had definitely dwindled down into something else, an anxiety, my heart was still racing but I could tell that there was a part of me I wasn’t willing to yet consciously acknowledge that told me this was a stupid idea. And again, I wasn’t emotionally mature enough to be thinking about anybody else besides myself. I was purely concerned with what if we get in trouble, what if my parents have to get involved?

And Rich, he was pretty nervous too, but it was a carefree worry, like settling in to watch a really scary movie. Sure, he’d be along for whatever ride this turned out to be, but at the end of the day, he could always shrug and be like, I don’t know why Rob threw those sodas. I had nothing to do with it.

I pulled up to the drive-thru, I ordered four extra large Baja Blast Mountain Dews, and as we turned the corner to the window, we both kind of giggled a little bit. It was happening. The sodas had been ordered. Maybe this would be easier than the mental struggle I was setting up for myself here. Maybe all I had to do was throw and drive, and then I could laugh and laugh and laugh.

But we pulled up, and it’s this big dude, he’s passing me the sodas, telling me how much they cost. I didn’t even look at Rich, I just took out a ten, gave it to the guy, took the change, and left. Rich started laughing, I guess I deserved it, I guess he had to make fun of me, I mean, I was the one behind the wheel.

And looking back, I have that whole justification, the putting myself in the other person’s shoes, the realization that people shouldn’t go around throwing sodas at each other. But I still cringe, I still get pissed, like why wasn’t I thinking? Why did I sit there and let Rich make fun of me for the rest of the night? Why didn’t he offer me even a dollar for one of those sodas? Man, I haven’t seen my old friend Rich in forever. I wonder what he’s up to right now.