I think I could fix a flat tire by myself now, although I shouldn’t need to for some time. Of course, Tuesday evening I did not possess such confidence about matters of car care. Moon and I were heading home from her music lessons, and as I listened to her chatting away about school and such, I noticed the car was handling differently. I turned from one busy street onto another, rolling to a stop right out of the intersection. We had a flat tire. And basically, I panicked, because it was dark out, I didn’t have any handy phone numbers, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing a compartment for a spare in our trunk.

A cop pulled up behind us, asked me to pull s-l-o-w-l-y into the turn lane, confirmed that we had a cell phone… and left.

Once upon a time, just for kicks, I enrolled in an auto maintenance class at the community college in Hometown. Oddly enough, the instructor had been one of my high school classmates. He had been one of those quiet gearhead-slash-burnout kids back then, but was quite the authority in the classroom. We learned the difference between a crankshaft and a camshaft. I vaguely remember changing spark plugs on a disembodied engine and doing a brake job on a big ol’ ’70s-era gas guzzler.

I’m pretty sure I learned how to change a tire, but the time lapse (and my panic) rendered me useless. So I called a towing company, and a nice young man charged me $55 for the job. (He found the spare.) The next day, I took the car into the shop – and drove home with four new tires.

I’d much rather spend the money on yarn. Or Michael’s Frozen Custard.