PIECES OF METAL IN TIRE NOT A GOOD SIGN

I noticed it last night. Shiny, menacing, small… protruding from my right front tire. A sharp spike embedded in the rubber like a nail through my heart. I don’t know if it’s Murphy’s Law, the law that says, “Oh yeah, she has no money, let’s get her!” or just one of those days. UGH.

When I purchased these tires at Discount Tire almost three years ago, I bought the little “free replacement” guarantee with those tires. Remembering this gave me new life this morning. I’m still not sure if I’ll be able to afford the flu shot tomorrow, but I’m closer now than I was when I discovered that long, shiny, metal intruder on my tire.

I drove down to Discount Tire (slowly and carefully, I might add) and made it without incident. I went to the counter and told the guy, “I have a right front tire going down. It’s got a nail in it, I think. When you’re finished, can you put the two best tires in front?” The guy blinks at me, like he didn’t understand the words coming out of my mouth. I realized that he probably thinks all women are dumb about things like this, and in sounding intelligent, I confused him. I turned on my blonde and said, “Sir, there’s a little silver thingy in my tire on the passenger’s side and I think there’s air leaking out of it. Can you fix it?” I tried to resist twisting my hair around my finger and tilting my head, but I couldn’t. If I’d been chewing gum, I promise you I would have smacked it loudly and made that dumb blonde noise when I was finished. As I stopped talking the light in the guy’s eyes came on and he nodded and asked if I had purchased the tires there. Sheesh.

My friend Lee Ann from Tulsa and I used to go into the auto section of say, Wal-Mart and announce our presence. “Blondes in automotive!” and Lee Ann, who does the dumb blonde noise perfectly, would add that and a giggle at the end. Lee Ann probably knows more about cars than I do, but we just loved to see how many guys would come running toward us to “help” us after we’d made our announcement. It was too funny.

I try not to get offended by a man’s assumptions that I don’t know anything about “his” world. I just keep quiet until he assumptions his way into a corner, and then says something like, “a foul ball is when the batter hits the ball on the other side of that chalky white line,” or “a pair of pliers is that tool that’s pointy at the end.” He then sits back and smiles, thinking he’s done his part by informing me of how much he knows about manly things — thus leaving himself wide open for me to openly mock him. (In the Southern way, of course — the way a Southern woman mocks someone and they don’t know it for hours, or perhaps ever). After his assumption is in a sling, I simply make a truthful, consise statement showing that my other x chromosome, perhaps, is a little short, thus resembling, but not imitating, a y, or that I, perhaps, might (gasp) understand what he’s been talking about, or what’s going on in the game.

I’ve found that men assume that most women know nothing about:

a) cars

b) sports

c) barbecue (like cooking outdoors makes it different)

d) everything else except those tasks that require an apron, a stove, or sewing machine… and they’ll give us credit for having the knowledge of how to take care of those screaming, needy entities that emerged from our wombs

If you’re a man, and you’re reading this and you’re a little miffed at my blatant “anti y-chromer” overtones, I ask you to remember how outraged, angry and small you feel right now… the next time you assume anything about what a particular woman does or doesn’t know. And if you’re really nice and treat me like the intelligent princess I am, when you ask me for my phone number, I might give you my real one and not the number to the prayer line at church.

The Cubs just blew a three run lead. I have to go now. Hopefully, they’ll get it together and I can put my sackcloth and ashes away.