Helpers

Today, I had a doctor appointment scheduled in a town about a thirty minute drive from where I live. I thought something on my car felt a little strange when I was leaving home, but there were no warning lights on or anything, so I started on my way. When I was about a mile outside of the town I was going to, suddenly my car made a warning beep sound. “Low Tire Pressure” flashed on my dash and, within seconds, I heard the telltale “whomp-whomp-whomp” sound of a fully flat tire going down the highway at 65 mph. I pulled off the highway, put my hazard lights on, and sat for a second while I tried to decide what to do next…

First, I called the doctor’s office to tell them I wouldn’t make it to my appointment. Maybe a weird first move, but I didn’t want them to be standing around waiting for me. And I was actually able to get it rescheduled for next week. Then I texted The Bearded One, who was at home about twenty five miles away, and he called me right away to troubleshoot. Because, and this is a little embarrassing, even though I grew up on a farm, and I know how to use power tools and have probably helped change tires on farm equipment, I’ve never actually changed a tire on a car. I know the process, of jacking it up, taking the lug nuts off, and all that, but I honestly didn’t know if I had a jack or anything in the car. When talking to The Bearded One, I suddenly had the thought that I might have Roadside Assistance from my insurance company, so I called them, and the automated system said that I was a “Crown Loyalty Member” because I’ve had car insurance through them forever, so I was put at the head of the line for calls coming in. Sadly, being a “Crown Loyalty Member” doesn’t get me Roadside Assistance though, because apparently that’s an add-on service that I don’t have. The person I talked to then told me that my car insurance was paid in full, but that it would need to be renewed in just over a month, and asked if I wanted to pay over the phone with her. I said no, that I was on the side of a highway with semis blowing past a few feet away, and I needed to figure out how I was going to get out of that situation. Then she told me to “have a great day”… (insert side-eye emoji here)

So, I called The Bearded One again and he checked his car insurance policy. Yes, we’re married. No we’re not on the same car insurance. Chalk it up to us getting married in our mid-thirties, and both being loyal to our car insurance companies I guess. Anyway, it turns out he DOES have Roadside Assistance, so he started looking into whether or not it would cover me too. While he was trying to figure that part out, a pickup pulled over ahead of me and started backing up. A young woman got out of the passenger’s side and walked back to talk to me. She said she’d had a flat tire recently too, and that har husband had changed it no problem, and wanted to know if I had help coming or if I wanted him to come and help. She got him from the pickup and I started taking the stuff out of my back hatch (because my farmers market tables and concrete blocks to weigh my tent down live in the back hatch right now) to get the spare tire out. That’s when I discovered that I don’t actually HAVE a spare tire.

See, when I was shopping for cars a year and a half ago, I’d test-driven a car that was almost identical to the one I ended up buying, and the salesman made a big deal about showing me the full-size spare tire that it had. So when I found the car I ended up buying, I assumed that, since the cars were almost identical, it would also have a full-size spare. But the big difference between the car I’d test driven and the one I bought is that the one I bought is a hybrid–the other car wasn’t. So, where the other car had a spare tire, my car has its giant battery. Woops. What my car DID have was a “flat tire kit”. So, Mitchell, that was the young man’s name, got that out, and we got it plugged into my car because he and Angelica (his wife) told me there was a tire place just off the highway, so if we could get it pumped up a little maybe I could get my car there before it got flat again. Buuut there was a hole in the tire. A sizable hole. And when Mitchell hooked up the tire kit to try to pump it up the air just came right back out the big hole that some nail or something had left in it.

While Mitchell was working on that, another pickup pulled up behind my car. He asked if we needed help, and said he had a jack and an impact driver in his pickup and that, if I would like him to, he could jack up my car, take the tire off, and take it (and me) the mile or so into town to the tire place to see if they could fix it. I surreptitiously took a picture of his license plate (because stranger danger), and was going to send it to The Bearded One just in case he turned out to be a bad guy, but I didn’t even get it sent. When I got into his pickup after he took the wheel off my car he said, “I don’t want you to worry,” and he showed me his ID–he was a Sheriff’s Deputy in a neighboring county on his day off. And, by the time I got a text sent to The Bearded One telling him what was going on, and that he could probably stop trying to see if his Roadside Assistance would cover me, we were at the tire place. Curt (that was this guy’s name) got the wheel out of his pickup and rolled it up to the open shop doors where we were met by a guy who took the tire in and had it fixed within about 10 minutes. I paid ($25.68) for the tire repair while Curt put the tire back in his pickup, and then we headed back to my car on the side of the highway.

Curt got the tire back on my car, and I thanked him profusely. He said his son lived nearby and his son’s girlfriend has been having trouble with her car lately, and he hoped that if she ever got stranded on the side of the road that someone would stop and help her. And we were both on our way. Only about an hour had passed since the tire went flat.

I knew immediately that I would write a blog post about this situation because…just, wow. The kindness of complete strangers who took time out of their day to help me just because I needed help. But as I was writing I started thinking about how privileged I am. First of all, I have a support system–if The Bearded One hadn’t been able to get Roadside Assistance to me, or come to get me himself (because he had to go to work, and my kind strangers hadn’t stopped, I have a working phone and money in my bank account to pay for a tow truck. I’m also white. I’m not saying that my team of helpers wouldn’t have stopped if I looked different than I do–I think they were all wonderful people and would have stopped for anybody. But I was thinking about how people are literally being snatched off the street by masked assailants because they aren’t white and may be immigrants. I haven’t talked publicly about what’s going on in this country lately, but it’s absolutely terrifying. And I don’t even have to worry about that kind of thing happening to me. Yet. But there are certain people in power in our government who seem fully invested in rolling back rights for people who aren’t straight, cis, white men. And I know that after they come for immigrants, it’s a slippery slope to taking rights and due process away from other minorities, women, and anyone who speaks out against what they’re doing. Friends, we have to figure out what to do to save this country from abandoning its founding principles which, according to our National Archives are, and I quote:

Checks and Balances: The Constitutionally granted power for one branch of government to block action by an equal branch of government. The Constitution specifies instances in which one of the three branches can stop action by another. Historical precedents have established others.
Federalism: A system of constitutional government in which power is divided into layers with several states on one level and an overarching federal government on another with authority balanced between the state and federal governments.
Limited Government: The government has only the powers granted to it in the Constitution, and it can only conduct actions permitted by the Constitution.
Popular Sovereignty: The Preamble to the Constitution is an introduction to the type of government the Founders were creating. Its opening phrase stresses that this government is made by the people and exists to represent, protect, and serve them.
Republicanism: A system of government in the United States based in the concept of popular sovereignty and put into practice by the constitutional institutions and processes of representative government.
Separation of Powers: The Constitution keeps the three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) separate. The powers and responsibilities of each is described in a separate Article. Separation makes each Branch the equal of the others.

Think about the current administration and what they’re doing right now. How many of these principles have they already abandoned or worked to dismantle? What will they try to do away with next? I’m not saying the Founding Fathers had everything figured out–many of them obviously had some…issues. And there are amendments to the Constitution for various reasons. But I think it’s pretty striking to look at these principles and then think about what’s happening now.

So, on this emotional rollercoaster of a day for me, I’ll end with this. Be a helper, and absolutely be grateful when you need a helper and one appears. And please slow down or give space if someone is stranded on the side of the road (I’m looking at you truck drivers who had plenty of time and space to get into the left lane but chose to ride the right line while I was mere feet away). But keep an eye out for others who need help too–and not just your own friends and neighbors. Right now it might be people who are mostly in this country trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. They might be here legally, they might not be. But no human, and they are all human, deserves to be treated the way many of them are being treated. And if you stay quiet and allow it to happen to them because it doesn’t directly affect your life, who’s to say you won’t be next?