With any luck, we were hoping to complete the four-hour drive to our son’s college by midnight. But that was not to be.
Our son had grabbed a ride with friends the day before, but asked us to follow close behind with all the gear he had carefully packed for college, plus some boxes we were taking for the friends. So, our otherwise roomy car was stuffed tight.
We were barely two miles into our adventure, just settling in to a new audiobook, when my husband announced that one of our tires was losing air, fast. He turned the car around and we held our breath as the car’s electronic system dashed all hopes of a miracle. Watching the pounds-per-square-inch plummet.…30…29…28… we wondered, would we make it home before the pressure fell to zero? Should we pull over at the nearest grassy patch and try to swap the tire?
One complication: the spare we hoped was in the trunk was buried under mounds of stuff, all of which would need to be unloaded onto the side of the road to get to it. Changing the flat would not just be arduous and a wee dangerous; It would also be a spectacle.
Although the trouble had started before we reached the highway, this stretch of road was very windy, and the ground was wet. We did not see anywhere obvious to pull over. Eventually, we had no choice. The tire lost pressure, and we scudded to a stop.
As longtime members of AAA, we tried calling roadside assistance. But neither of our cellphones had any reception on this back road.
My husband pulled out the car’s manual to see if we had special tires the dealer had cheerfully mentioned that allow you to drive a while on a flat. The manual was unclear as to whether we did.
Slowly, my husband drove on a little farther and pulled over again. Still, no reception. He repeated this a few times, without luck.
I then remembered the car was outfitted with a satellite service you could call in a pinch, which I sometimes hit while fumbling for the reading light. Had we paid that bill? And would the carmaker’s minions actually come, or at least be able to tell us if we had the special tires so we could keep driving?
The call button did connect us to someone named Dolly, who put us on hold and never came back on the line. Even after turning off the engine, our “smart” car would not allow us to disconnect that emergency call so we could try again. We sat there stranded, waiting for deliverance for twenty minutes before my husband turned the car back on and continued inching homeward.
When we finally limped into our driveway, we still had to transfer all the contents of our large car into a smaller one. We shoehorned everything in. That’s when I finally noticed what we had missed earlier.
Turning to my husband, I asked as gingerly as I could, “Honey, where exactly was the large suitcase that our son had packed for school?” Picturing it in my head, I recalled that it contained every stitch of his clothing. Everything else in the car was just paraphernalia — nothing you could wear.
“In the house,” my husband said, freezing in place. He spun around to fetch the forgotten object from inside. Reunited with the suitcase a few minutes later, we repacked the car once more and hit the road, ever grateful for the blessing of the flat.
Alison Leigh Cowan is editor of How to Survive Your Freshman Year, sixth edition.
