10 PM Tire Failure

CLUNK.

You lunk, you hit the curb again.

The impact knocks my mind from Seussian simplicity to silent contemplation. This new, slightly slanted angle from the driver's seat is accompanied by a grinding din. No car should lean to the side like mine is.

My neurons fire in anxious frenzy as I turn off the highway. I've been driving for 2 minutes - how could this have happened?
I struggle to breathe as I drive into the cul-de-sac. The lack of oxygen makes it difficult for me to tell my arm to put the car into park. I'm shocked. I am in no hurry to confirm what I already know. Maybe if I make a quick prayer, God will take pity on my tired, sorry state and send a tow truck my way.

I step out into the frigid, still night air and round the front of my Honda Civic. It is sagging to the side with its grill frowning and its headlights dim. My suspicions are confirmed louder and more profanely than I would care to admit - I swear loud enough to wake the neighborhood I am stuck in.

Rather than wallow in my deflated state out in the cold, I return to the fading warm air left in the driver's seat. Then I do what anyone from my generation eventually does when they don't know how to solve a problem - I turn to my cell phone for answers.

I make a quick call home and am reminded of the fact that despite feeling like a tired wreck, I am not completely incompetent and that I can change the tire myself. Obviously, it is worded kinder than that, but I don't care to distinguish the tone in the air when I have a bigger problem to deal with. A good twenty minutes are wasted arguing over the location of the spare tire in my car - neither in the trunk or underneath the car - as I became increasingly certain that my father is just messing with me. It turns out we both are full of it - the spare waits patiently in a compartment inside the trunk that blends with the floor.

The car jack is easy enough to operate - I just use the tire iron as a handle and crank it up like turning a wheel. The problem is that it scrapes the ground with every crank, so I have to reposition the handle every half rotation. Eventually the hollow tire is off the ground, and I begin to work on the lug nuts. I can't see the hole that has formed on the tire's side, but the sad state it is in is undeniable proof that one existed.

For the next hour, I continue to set the spare in and out of place, tighten and untighten the lug nuts, and try to understand why the wheel is always at a funny angle. My sweltering anger, born of exasperated confusion, balances with a cold confidence that I can eventually make it through this. Just like rubber rapidly breaks down when it transitions between hot and cold, my mind is failing me as quickly as my tire, and this cycle is starting to wear me down.

Once more I crank the lug nuts right and left, finally setting the wheel straight. Upon returning to the driver's seat, I'm greeted with bright orange complaints from the electronic dashboard. The car refuses to accept the spare tire as it is completely different from the original and thus the car can't read the tire pressure, but I no longer care. The remainder of the trip home is frustratingly slow. The wobbly thing keeps sliding the vehicle closer and closer to the right, and it seems that the spare tire is determined to cause the car's airbags to deploy one way or another. But I manage to keep control long enough to get back to campus.

Back in the parking garage, I drag myself out of the driver's seat and walk to the stairs when fate finds me wanting one last time. The spare is now flat too!