Long And Winding Road

I had a front tire go out on me this year. If you knew the level of abuse my vehicles have historically been subjected to...this would come as no surprise.

Let's just say that my retired vehicles have a support group somewhere...probably in the same bar as my ex-boyfriends...and they sit around comparing war-wounds. But I had a belt in my tire snap this year. I took the car to a dealership thinking I had more massive damage, found out the culprit was the belt in my tire, and got a new tire.

The weird, out of body moment happened as I observed myself chasing down the manufacturer warranty on my defective tire. The fact that the word warranty came to mind, let alone that I bothered to state my claim was out of character to say the least. I became a warranty chaser. It was one of those revelations where I had to broaden my definition of myself. Embracing the curmudgeon within I drove out of the service station with a new tire free of charge. Balanced. Rotated. Squared. And free. Not in the liberated sense but in the monetary sense. Free.

I thought it was a blip. A one time occurrence. I drove away, examining the wrinkles and stern frown on my face in the rear view mirror. I told myself this was not a habit forming event. I etch-n-sketched the moment with a shake of the head and tried to erase the memory entirely from my mental hard drive.

It worked okay until Barnes and Noble jilted my daughter this summer. Now, now I never blew my stack. None of the customer service agents reeled with pain in the wake of our exchange. I asserted what I thought was fair and made sure my daughter got it.

The kicker was a sleepless night McKibbin and I spent in a hotel due to a party across the hallway. Who hasn't had this happen? You check-in. You soak in the hot tub. You climb into bed. And the party-goers get going. Any hotel is filled with scads of people, each having different agendas for the evening. Some intend to sleep, some intend to party. After several courteous, but unmistakably clear exchanges both our hotel neighbors and the front desk that McKibbin and I had the sleeping agenda; we checked out of the hotel at 2 a.m. to find a night's rest elsewhere. Before we left, however, I had secured a full refund of any room charges.

It's come to this. I'm the kill-joy. The image conjures a dark road ahead as that nit-picky-penny-pincher who gets out a calculator to divy up the check, the one who never tips well, who shames retail clerks into silence with antiquated phrases like "the customer is always right."

It might be a dark road ahead filled with an unending series stern conversations with various managers, my friends might begin to cringe whenever I get tepid coffee for fear I'll make a scene...it might be a long, dark, road I'm on here but, I can say, as I'm traveling this direction... my tires work just fine.