Sometimes in life, weird things just seem to happen. They happen for no apparent reason and seem to be somewhat random.
Well, a few days ago, I had one of these random things happen to me...
...I was driving to my mother's house to go visit her. I was probably going only 10-15 mph because I was getting ready to stop at a 4 way stop intersection. There were some black cords strung tightly across the road, which I had learned a while ago were there because that is how the city keeps track of how much traffic is on a particular road. I had driven over these things countless times before and had no worries about doing so again. Well, I drove over them and the next thing I heard was a loud POP and then a thudthudthudthud. It was coming from the back passenger side of my car. That tire had been low on air for a while and little naive me just thought that perhaps it had gone flat. I pulled over, turned on my hazard lights, got out to look at my car and what did I see? A ginormous nail over a ginormous washer stuck deep into my tire, and a black cord trailing out the back of my car. Seriously, it almost seemed like a joke. There were plenty of cars ahead of me on the road, why couldn't this happen to them? Or why couldn't the cord have just snapped and left the nail plunged deep into the road? And when it comes to anything going wrong with a car and me being stranded on the road alone, I become a big fountain of tears and there's no holding it back. Trust me, I wish I could, but I think the embarrassment of being stranded on the road brings my emotions to the surface. Thankfully, I didn't cry hard this time, I just got teary eyed.
Luckily for me, the lady right behind me offered to pull over and put my kids in her car so that they wouldn't have to stay in my hot car while it was on the side of the road. It had just started to rain so it was really nice of her to offer. Then not too far behind her was a guy who had just gotten off of work from a tire store and he got down under my car and checked to make sure my axle wasn't ruined (the cord was wrapped around it) and he changed my tire for me. (I had called my husband and he was on his way). While all this was going on, a lady walked up to me and told me that she had been parked on the side of the road talking on her cell phone and she had seen what happened, and the tire guy told her to wait until a cop showed up to make a report and then she could give her witness in case the city didn't believe my story. Well, right when the officer showed up it started pounding rain all over the place. My poor husband was soaked to the bone while I sat in his car. Thankfully, the hard rain only lasted about a minute and the rain completely stopped when we got out of the car to talk to the officer. To keep a long story short, he basically said that it wasn't a crime and we didn't need witnesses, so he wrote up a small report and gave us the phone number to the city office that we would need to contact in order to get our tire fixed. He said it was just one of those freak accidents (obviously!). He was very nice to us. So the next day, I got ahold of the department I needed to, they said they would pay for the damages, we took the tire to Les Schwab and they fixed it for free (that nail was over 6 inches long!. So, all in all, it was a win-win for everybody.
This weird story has a happy ending, but it's definitely one that is very rare and probably won't be heard again for a long time. I don't know if this was supposed to teach me a lesson or not, but it will certainly be something I won't forget.
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