Suebob's Red Stapler

Imagine Carl from Caddyshack as darker, stockier and a tow-truck driver. That was who came this morning when I called Triple A because I had a flat tire.

"Oh, man," he said as he pulled up. "Everyone at work is going to be lonely for Sue, wondering where Sue is, thinking 'Sue is walking on the beach instead of coming to work.' They’re going to miss you."

Mind you, I have never seen this person before. But he has my name on his manifest and now apparently has license to imagine my whole life history.

He opined on what caused my flat tire.

"It could be anything, you know? A piece of metal, a nail, maybe you hit the curb."

"Yeah," I agreed. "It could be almost anything."

"I’m not done yet," he said, mad that I had interrupted his list. "It could be a hundred things. Maybe it was a leprechaun who didn’t like you parking near his lawn. Or a gremlin who thought your silver car was a spaceship and wanted it to fly instead of drive."

He said this all as if those were perfectly reasonable, though rare, reasons someone's tire might get popped.

For some odd reason he demanded to flip through my owner's manual - with his heavy work gloves on - to find the page where it showed how you jack up the car. After this laborious and long process - it really took a while, and my owner's manual will never be quite the same between the wrinkles and the grease - he made me read the steps of changing a tire to him while he changed the tire. Before I had the third step read, he was done, so the whole exercise was kind of moot.

"I'll bet you have seen some weird stuff, being a tow-truck driver," I said, hoping to hear at least one story that I could amaze my friends with - someone with a trunk full of chimpanzees, or a headless horse, or a wrecked car full of clowns - something.

"Oh no," he replied. "It's all normal to me."

Figures.