Blow out.
The Robot Ate Me had just come on as my new Zune shuffled through tunes and I happily thought of the evening to come. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon and I intended to reach Bloomington a little later than I had originally intended. An Animal Collective listening party was in store for me at six, as was some kind of vegan culinary adventure and the pleasure of falling asleep giggling with AG again from the comfort of his couch, pushed near to his space heater and bed. I sang along to Ryland Bouchard’s flowery romantic lyrics. I began to think of past failed romances that had defined the meaning of the song to me. “Will you be the one that smiles for me-“
An explosive sound came crashing through the cab of the truck and the front sank to the right. I was still singing as I managed to steer the careening truck from the left lane of the highway at 75mph off to the right and eventually off into the arm of the highway. My “e” faded as the shock began to sink in. The sound of grating, suffering metal now filled the cab. I began to reason with my truck, softly, but with a building frantic emphasis on the fact that it needed to stop. “A blow out,” I whispered. “You had a blow out.” When it finally halted, I sat there for a moment, processing. I turned off Ryland, he was only distracting me now. I slowly pushed in the blinkers button behind my steering wheel and turned off the engine, still processing. I crept out of the truck as the traffic whizzing past my window dwindled. The left side of my truck was about two feet away from the line which marked death for all animals who ventured past it. I rounded the truck and slowly approached the sunken end of the front. The wheel was now fostering multiple wounds in its thick rubber. The cold was already beginning to sting my eyes, fingers and toes. I stepped away from the truck, imagining one of the inconsiderate semis that continued to fly past its left merely clipping it but sending it right into me. My imagined death was gruesome in my mind as I brought up “Home” on my list of contacts. It went to the answering machine and I had just begun to stammer “My, uh…I…I had a blow-“ “-Hello?” I had remembered that my mother doesn’t typically answer the phone at home because we have no caller ID and she seems to not enjoy speaking to people unless she has to. “I had a blow out,” I managed to say. “What?!” “I was driving along and I…the front right tire blew out.” “Have you called Dad yet?” “No, not yet.”
The phone calls continued as the cold now bit ferociously at my face and hands. I stared angrily at the 67 mile mark sign up ahead of my truck as I fought the cold and ice for the right to open my passenger side door. The lock sticks when it gets cold. When it finally yielded to me, I shoved all the stuff piled in the cab’s backseat storage area away from the child’s seats and quickly found the jack and lugwrench stored in the small compartment behind it. Dad was rattling off the process of changing a tire to me and I had completely spaced out everything past “get the long rod out from under the hood.” “I’m completely lost,” I stammered. “Well, what do you want me to say?!” Dad was about a half hour south of South Bend on his way back to Fort Wayne, which was at least three and a half hours away from where I was, about 45 minutes north of Indianapolis. I knew that his frustration was, at the moment, stemming from his inability to be there at that moment. “Tell you what-just call me back when you’re working on getting the spare out from under the truck. Ok?” “Ok, bye.” During the course of that brief conversation, I had missed two calls from Mom. She left a message that had been completely jumbled with static. I called her back immediately, and she informed me that I should probably call 911 and get a police officer to stand by as I did all these things. Good Samaritans no longer exist. Only highway serial killers and pirate-types. I immediately, though quietly, dismissed this idea, as I was not injured, and, to me, calling 911 for anything other than a medical emergency is ridiculous. Especially when the “emergency” is as anti-climactic as a blown tire. I told her I needed to hang up and work on what dad had told me to do, and as soon as I hung up and retrieved the “long rod” a state policeman pulled up behind me. He and I attempted to get the spare out, and then he announced that the bolt was rusted and that he couldn’t continue to attempt to remove it because it could snap off and then we would “really be screwed.” So, he took me a few miles down the highway to a Love’s/McDonald’s where I spent the next three hours waiting for my parents to arrive and pondering the secretive lives of truckers.
When my parents arrived, we went back to the truck, got the spare, replaced the tire, and everything seemed fine. Shortly after I began moving, my dad flashed me down. When I attempted to stop, I couldn’t. My truck eventually rolled to a halt, and I knew what had happened. Riding on the shattered rim had somehow fucked up my truck’s brakes. “Something was sparking” my dad said as he headed toward the front of my truck. I watched as the light snow drifted through the light of my headlights as he began laughing and swearing. I smirked to myself for a moment, acknowledging that I react to unfortunate disasters in a similar way. “This is FUCKING RIDICULOUS” he yelled into oncoming traffic while laying beneath my truck. I glanced under and spotted a large metal box structure hanging there from a cable just beyond the tire. Dad used some plastic ties to secure it to the twisted frame that had never recovered from when the treemonster attacked my vehicle when I was a junior in high school. Soon enough, Dad was telling me that he wasn’t going to let me drive it without brakes, and then handing me the keys to his. We drove it down the highway at a snail’s pace, blinkers on. He gracefully maneuvered through the intersection at the exit and into the parking lot of a gas station. As he filled the replaced tire with air, brake fluid leaked all over the parking lot.
The following options have been presented to me:
1. Don’t live in Hillcrest and use the money you would have spent on that apartment to buy a new car/pay for the repairs to this one.
2. Don’t live in Bloomington over the summer and use that money to pay for it.
3. Go without a car and do these things.
4. Do all these things but use more loan money that you will be paying off for years and years.
An explosive sound came crashing through the cab of the truck and the front sank to the right. I was still singing as I managed to steer the careening truck from the left lane of the highway at 75mph off to the right and eventually off into the arm of the highway. My “e” faded as the shock began to sink in. The sound of grating, suffering metal now filled the cab. I began to reason with my truck, softly, but with a building frantic emphasis on the fact that it needed to stop. “A blow out,” I whispered. “You had a blow out.” When it finally halted, I sat there for a moment, processing. I turned off Ryland, he was only distracting me now. I slowly pushed in the blinkers button behind my steering wheel and turned off the engine, still processing. I crept out of the truck as the traffic whizzing past my window dwindled. The left side of my truck was about two feet away from the line which marked death for all animals who ventured past it. I rounded the truck and slowly approached the sunken end of the front. The wheel was now fostering multiple wounds in its thick rubber. The cold was already beginning to sting my eyes, fingers and toes. I stepped away from the truck, imagining one of the inconsiderate semis that continued to fly past its left merely clipping it but sending it right into me. My imagined death was gruesome in my mind as I brought up “Home” on my list of contacts. It went to the answering machine and I had just begun to stammer “My, uh…I…I had a blow-“ “-Hello?” I had remembered that my mother doesn’t typically answer the phone at home because we have no caller ID and she seems to not enjoy speaking to people unless she has to. “I had a blow out,” I managed to say. “What?!” “I was driving along and I…the front right tire blew out.” “Have you called Dad yet?” “No, not yet.”
The phone calls continued as the cold now bit ferociously at my face and hands. I stared angrily at the 67 mile mark sign up ahead of my truck as I fought the cold and ice for the right to open my passenger side door. The lock sticks when it gets cold. When it finally yielded to me, I shoved all the stuff piled in the cab’s backseat storage area away from the child’s seats and quickly found the jack and lugwrench stored in the small compartment behind it. Dad was rattling off the process of changing a tire to me and I had completely spaced out everything past “get the long rod out from under the hood.” “I’m completely lost,” I stammered. “Well, what do you want me to say?!” Dad was about a half hour south of South Bend on his way back to Fort Wayne, which was at least three and a half hours away from where I was, about 45 minutes north of Indianapolis. I knew that his frustration was, at the moment, stemming from his inability to be there at that moment. “Tell you what-just call me back when you’re working on getting the spare out from under the truck. Ok?” “Ok, bye.” During the course of that brief conversation, I had missed two calls from Mom. She left a message that had been completely jumbled with static. I called her back immediately, and she informed me that I should probably call 911 and get a police officer to stand by as I did all these things. Good Samaritans no longer exist. Only highway serial killers and pirate-types. I immediately, though quietly, dismissed this idea, as I was not injured, and, to me, calling 911 for anything other than a medical emergency is ridiculous. Especially when the “emergency” is as anti-climactic as a blown tire. I told her I needed to hang up and work on what dad had told me to do, and as soon as I hung up and retrieved the “long rod” a state policeman pulled up behind me. He and I attempted to get the spare out, and then he announced that the bolt was rusted and that he couldn’t continue to attempt to remove it because it could snap off and then we would “really be screwed.” So, he took me a few miles down the highway to a Love’s/McDonald’s where I spent the next three hours waiting for my parents to arrive and pondering the secretive lives of truckers.
When my parents arrived, we went back to the truck, got the spare, replaced the tire, and everything seemed fine. Shortly after I began moving, my dad flashed me down. When I attempted to stop, I couldn’t. My truck eventually rolled to a halt, and I knew what had happened. Riding on the shattered rim had somehow fucked up my truck’s brakes. “Something was sparking” my dad said as he headed toward the front of my truck. I watched as the light snow drifted through the light of my headlights as he began laughing and swearing. I smirked to myself for a moment, acknowledging that I react to unfortunate disasters in a similar way. “This is FUCKING RIDICULOUS” he yelled into oncoming traffic while laying beneath my truck. I glanced under and spotted a large metal box structure hanging there from a cable just beyond the tire. Dad used some plastic ties to secure it to the twisted frame that had never recovered from when the treemonster attacked my vehicle when I was a junior in high school. Soon enough, Dad was telling me that he wasn’t going to let me drive it without brakes, and then handing me the keys to his. We drove it down the highway at a snail’s pace, blinkers on. He gracefully maneuvered through the intersection at the exit and into the parking lot of a gas station. As he filled the replaced tire with air, brake fluid leaked all over the parking lot.
The following options have been presented to me:
1. Don’t live in Hillcrest and use the money you would have spent on that apartment to buy a new car/pay for the repairs to this one.
2. Don’t live in Bloomington over the summer and use that money to pay for it.
3. Go without a car and do these things.
4. Do all these things but use more loan money that you will be paying off for years and years.