It's true folks... chivalry is dead

Yesterday, while in a strange town, at a strange place, in a strange twist of fate, I got a flat tire on my van. Yes, I had the kids with me. No, I don't know what I ran over.

I went to a little town about 25 minutes from home to pick up the last of our ham and bacon from the meat market. In our efforts to know exactly where our food comes from, we buy our beef and pork directly from the farmer and have it slaughtered and processed to our specifications. It really is yummier meat than what you can buy in the store. And safer.

This meat market has had our smoked items ready since June but never bothered to call. I finally thought, "Hey, where's our bacon?" and called them. Oops. Yeah. It was ready. So off we went to pick it up.

I park the van, walk into the meat place, wait about 2 minutes for someone to come to the counter. A previous customer was just leaving when he kindly pointed out that my back passenger side tire was flat. Wwhhhhaaattt??? I just drove in here on four good tires- it can't be flat! I looked out the window and sure enough, it was. Extremely flat. We went outside and could actually hear the air hissing out of the tire. Oh man!! The gentleman kindly offered to change it for me but I was still in disbelief mode. I just couldn't believe that a tire could go that flat in that short amount of time! So I told him not to worry, I would just call my husband to come and rescue me. Ha. You know what they say about hindsight.

Derick was not able to leave work as they were already two people short for the shift. Between he and I we called five people we know who were a) not at work or b) lived close enough to where I was to come and help. Not a single person was answering their phone. Not one.

Finally, I realized that I was going to have to figure this out on my own. Shamelessly, I turned the van off and opened the doors and told the kids to hang around outside and look pathetic. ;) Not really, but I did tell them that if they played outside the van then maybe someone would have pity on the woman with the flat tire and the four hot and sweaty kids. (did I mention that the temperature was close to 93 and the humidity was like 73%?)

I went back into the store to look in the phone book for a number of a friend from church. While standing there, a couple of able-bodied men walked in. Sort of half-joking I said, "Hey! You wanna change a flat tire today? haha hoho" The older guy looked at me and snapped, "Where?" I pointed at my van out the window and he literally just turned and walked away. Completely ignored me!! Didn't even say, "No, not really. " or "I'm sorry but I 've got to go." Nothing!! Just went over and picked up his meat and walked out the door. I could not believe it and I thought, that boy's mama needs to teach him a thing or two.

So we sat. No exaggeration when I say that four more young (20's-30's) men walked right past us and didn't say a word. At one point, Joshua looked at the retreating back of a young man and he said, "Um... we've got a flat tire here!" laced with just a little bit of sarcasm. I scolded him for being rude but inside I was thinking, Um..yeah..he's definitely ours.

Finally, an old guy (70-ish) stopped and asked if we could use some help. I told him I sure could and he started jacking up my van. It was so dang hot that he was dripping sweat within minutes and I started to think maybe he would have a heart attack or something. Finally, he went in and asked the store clerk if there was anyone with muscles to come and help. Two meat cutters came out and finished the job. One of them even ran home to get a real jack. Wahoo!!

And then--- my spare tire was almost flat. So we sat there and tried to figure out what to do. It was just one of those little donut tires and I was not comfortable taking it all the way home with the kids in the van and it being low on air. Just then another old guy drove up and he was like my knight in shining armor. He sounded just like my dad when he took charge of the situation and said, "You can't drive anywhere on that thing. I'll call Jessie downtown and see if he can stay open for you and he'll fix your tire." He called this little tiny service station in the little tiny downtown and arranged for the tire guy to stay and wait for me. He said, "Yeah, we got a woman here with four little kids that needs some help." Awwww..... my heart went pitter-pat. ;) Then the first old guy that stopped to help took my tire to Jessie so he could get started on fixing it while the rest of the guys got my van off the jack and got everything put away.

I drove about six blocks on that stupid little donut tire and there was this Jessie person, waiting. Another hero! He told me my tire was shot- there was a puncture in the sidewall. He found a gently used tire, mounted and balanced it, pumped up my spare and put it away, got everything back to a safe level and only charged me $37.50.

I was so thankful to everyone who helped. I think I was gushing but I wanted them to know how much I appreciated it. I hate playing the helpless woman role, but in this case, I really was helpless. I never took Auto Mechanics in high school.

When I called Derick to tell him I had found help and we were on our way home he said, "Good. Did the meat thaw out?" Nice. ;)

So we made it home but I was still very irritated by the fact that so many young men walked right past me sitting there with an obvious dilemma and never bothered to see if I needed help. It made a huge statement to me about our society when the only people who were willing to help were the over 65 crowd. It sure gave me a clearer picture of how I want to raise my boys.

So. All's well that ends well. The kids were great through the whole thing and this will fast become one of those family stories that gets told over Christmas dinner. Which will probably be ham.

Have a good one everybody!