Sometimes
events in life (especially mine) can be so ironic they're scary. A good example
of such irony happened to me a few weeks ago.
I was
checking my e-mail while eating lunch, when an offer for a free aptitude test
suddenly popped up on the screen. "Take this test now, and find out which
career you are best suited for," it read. "Haven't you ever
wondered?"
Actually,
I had. Curiosity got the better of me.
I decided to take the test.
The
questions were fairly simple at first, but as I went along, they became more
and more confusing: "If Mary is older than Susan and Susan is younger than
Kelly, is Kelly older than Mary?"
My first
instinct was to write down, “Who cares?” But I decided to give the test my best
shot, mainly because I was curious to see what my true calling in life was
meant to be. It took me 45 minutes to complete the test. The computer screen then read, "Please
wait while we calculate your score and determine your ideal career."
As I sat
waiting, all sorts of thoughts crossed my mind. Would the results tell me I
should be a novelist? A talk-show
host? A stand-up comedian? I could
hardly wait to find out. This, I was certain, would be the proof I needed to
confirm what I’d always felt I’d been destined to be.
When the
screen finally displayed my ideal occupation, my mouth fell open and my eyes
grew wide in disbelief. It said that
the perfect career for me (and I swear this is the absolute truth) was an auto
mechanic! "You have a natural
ability for tinkering with and repairing anything mechanical," it said.
I burst out laughing! Ironically, my dad had
been a terrific auto mechanic just about all of his life. But me? I could think of a million other things I’d
rather touch than something covered with oil and grease. And as far as being
mechanically inclined, it had taken me over a week just to figure out how to
work the electric can-opener.
After I
stopped laughing, I actually became a bit upset. I mean, I had wasted 45
perfectly good minutes of my time taking what had turned out to be a pitifully
inaccurate test.
The next
day, I had an appointment and decided to arrive early for a change. As I backed
my car out of the garage, I noticed that it felt as if I were trying to steer a
concrete truck. I also heard a scraping noise coming from underneath. I stopped
the car in the driveway and got out to check things out. There sat one of the flattest tires I’d ever
seen.
I
groaned. I was a great mechanic all
right. The only way I knew how to change a tire was to call AAA and have them
do it, so I grabbed my phone.
“We can be
there in about four hours,” the person who answered said, “We’re dealing with a
lot of calls today due to some icing on the secondary roads.”
“Four
hours?” I practically whined. “I have to make it to an appointment in an hour!”
“Sorry,”
the person said.
I decided
to try my neighborhood group on Facebook and post a desperate plea for
someone who might be available to help me change the tire. One by one, I
watched person after person read my my post…and then ignore it. When the "seen by" total hit 27 without even one
response, I muttered a lot of unpleasant things and deleted the post.
The
thought did cross my mind that if the aptitude test had been right, I’d have
been whipping off the old tire and slapping on the spare one in the blink of an
eye, and still would have been able to make my appointment with time to spare.
But there I stood in my driveway, glaring at the tire and wanting to give it a
swift kick in its lug nuts.
Suddenly,
a handsome young man came walking up my driveway. I had no idea who he was, but
he was smiling, which was a good sign.
“Someone
need a tire changed?” he asked. “I’m Brandon, your new neighbor, and I’m here
to help.”
I felt
like charging at him and crushing him in a bear hug, I was so relieved.
Instead, I just frowned and pointed at the rubber pancake on my car’s wheel.
“Yep!
That’s definitely flat,” he said and immediately set to work. “Where’s your
jack and your lug wrench?”
“Good
question,” I answered, shrugging. A lug wrench could have been lying in the driver's seat, for all I knew
My car is
a hatchback, so there’s no trunk. I honestly never had wondered before where
the stuff – like the spare tire – was hidden. Brandon lifted the carpeting on
the floor of the hatchback to reveal a compartment that contained a tiny
donut-looking tire.
I giggled. “You think
that puny little thing is going to make it to Concord?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he
said, “as long as you don’t go any faster than 50.”
His search
revealed another compartment to the side of the tire one. It contained the jack and lug
wrench.
Removing
the lug nuts, which appeared to have been welded onto the wheel and then
super-glued on top of it, required a lot of strength and muscle on Brandon’s part. And I
stood there and watched every flex of his biceps and every sway of his hips as
he struggled. It was the most entertainment I’d
had in a long time – nearly more than my aging old heart could bear.
And soon
(too soon) the spare tire was firmly in place. I didn’t know whether to be
happy…or disappointed.
“I can’t
thank you enough,” I said to Brandon. “You’re my knight in shining armor!”
He flashed
me a smile worthy of the best toothpaste commercial. “No problem. And if you
need anything else, you know where to find me. Just give me a shout.”
Now, I’m
even more certain than ever that I’d never want to be a mechanic, even though I
have a gut feeling that something else on my car is going to stop working very
soon – like maybe someone “accidentally” will leave the headlights turned on
all night and the battery will need to be jump-started.
By Brandon
and his biceps.
#
# #
Sally Breslin is an award-winning humor
columnist and the author of “There’s a Tick in my Underwear!” “Heed the
Predictor” and “The Common-Sense Approach to Dream Interpretation."
Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
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