I don't "tire" easily

I don't "tire" easily -- which will be far more meaningful in a moment. Yet, while this is true, I have run into a certain situation far too many times in the past 20-plus years and decided today it won't happen again.

I am not a helpless female ... most of the time! But I am completely comfortable with knowing (and understanding) my own limitations.

Now, here is where the fine line presents itself. Who do you call when you have stumbled into a situation where those limitations create obstacles to solving a problem on your own? I am curious ... what is your answer?

There is no fine line. If you are married, then you call your spouse. A marriage is a partnership, good and bad, sickness and health, blah blah blah. And when your wife calls you up and tells you that the car has a flat tire and that since her back is out she is unable to bend down to see where the jack would go, much less use the jack, and the 12-year-old son can help, certainly, but since YOUR BACK IS OUT and you can't do anything, essentially leaving the entire situation in the hands of a 12-year-old ... the last thing you want to hear is ...

"I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do, I was just walking out the door to a meeting."

I see.

No, I don't have Triple AAA -- at least, I don't right now. Tomorrow I will. This is a service set up specifically to help those who can't help themselves when their cars break down. Why don't I have it? I used to, when I was single and knew that if I broke down I wouldn't have any help. The thing is, I'm still in that situation. I just keep forgetting that.

I hate being helpless. I am strong and probably if I'd been feeling 100 percent I might have gotten the stupid tire off the car. But then again, probably not. After a half an hour of trying to get the spare tire down from its super Spiderman hidey spot under the car (done by putting the jack into a special hole and turning it until it falls to the ground ... all secret information that men seem to know, but to me it looked like the tire was super-glued to the bottom of the car) Charlie attempted to get the (lug nuts, are they lug nuts or am I making that up?) off of the tire with the jack. But he couldn't budge them. My sister couldn't budge them. I leaned down and gave it a tug, and sure, I felt it in my back. Oh, and I didn't budge them.

Goddamnit. Well, let's see. One half hour spent proving that we couldn't do it. Excellent.

The world has changed so much, everyone is supposed to be self-sufficient if they don't have a Plan B (like an accomodating husband or Triple A). So if you have a flat tire and you can't change it, what do you do? Go to a garage and see if they can help? What is a garage exactly? They don't really exist anymore -- they are "on the run" centers that are all about do-it-yourself and staffed by teenagers. Get help there? Not likely.

My sister suggested calling a cop. Really? Seems to me if you can't get help from your husband it's unlikely that a person trained to stop you for speeding would be interested in getting down and dirty and changing a tire.

And despite the fact that we were in a Park and Ride, all the doors were open on the car, there was a spare on the ground, a jack and two women and two children standing around, the men that did drive by us were clearly of the mindset of "I don't need this," and pretended not to see us. In fact, combined with getting no help from my husband AND the general public, I was once again reminded that you really are alone.

I honestly don't know why I am always so surprised. I guess because it's so sad.

So what happened?

First Peter tried to talk Charlie through it (that was the wasted half hour) and then he ended up calling one of his employees off of a job to come help us. It was stressed to me later that he did this -- that he PULLED one of his employees off of a job to come help me.

I see.

I explained to him that if he had called me and said he was stranded (this actually happened -- he called me and said he was stranded, had run out of gas) and I had said bummer, deal with it, how would that have felt?

(What I did do was jump into my car with a gas tank and rushed to help him. Go figure).

He responded by saying that I need to be more self-reliant ... and then the comment that he PULLED an employee off the job. And what was he supposed to do? Call the people he was having the meeting with and tell them he couldn't make it?

Well, ummm, let me think about it. YEAH. It's not like I am a habitual bad-backed flat-tire getter. For crying out loud.

I don't really know why I even call him, since his reaction -- so totally selfish and disgusting -- makes me question why I would even want to be married to him.

Right now I don't want to be. I am on high-alert, trying to figure out the steps I need to take to be "self-reliant." I spent several hours walking around a parking lot (to kill the time between discovering I had a flat tire until it was actually fixed) with my sister recounting all the times I've had situations where I needed help and didn't get any. In some cases I figured it out on my own, and in others, like SUV's with flat tires, I waited for others to help me.

(Tim, the employee who was pulled off the job in order to assist the helpless female, had to stand on the jack and bounce to loosen the bolts, and then in order to get the tire OFF of the car, had to go get a huge jack from his truck to smack it with.) Bottom line: Even without a bad back I wouldn't have been physically able to change that tire.

Did I know this? YES!

If you can't change a tire on a vehicle you drive, should you even be driving it? Well, if the radiator blew out, I wouldn't be expected to fix that, would I? (Well, probably.)

So that's my sad tale and I am tired of it. I need to have someone that I can call when I am in a situation where I need help, assistance ... fricking help! So if it has to be an organization that I pay a yearly fee to, then so be it.

Feeling helpless -- it's not my thing.