A few weeks ago I promised to tell you all about my flat tire. Or what I’m coming to call: The DAY I Leveled Up My Understanding of Humanity.
I think there’s an experiment here. It’s taken me awhile to process.
It all started when I heard a faint pop as I sped down the freeway toward the Richmond-San Rafael bridge. Okay, what I actually heard was something closer to a medium sized “thunk”. But knowing now that this was likely the moment my tire was punctured, let’s just go with “pop.”
I was on the bridge already by the time the tire pressure light came on, and the right side of the car had begun to hum low and loud.
I called my husband, “Hey! I think I have a flat tire but I’m in the middle of the bridge and there’s no shoulder to pull off onto. What do you think I should do?”
“I don’t think you want to stop in the middle of the bridge.”
Yeah. I really didn’t, so I slowed to a crawl and drove to the end where I was able to pull off the road.
I called AAA for the “We’re sorry, calls are heavier than normal,” run-around when an enormous Caltrans tow truck pulled up beside me.
The gentleman inside leaned out of his window and asked if I had a spare tire. When I said I did, he asked if I’d like him to change the tire for me. I gasped in gratitude as he jumped out, shrugging, “It’s my job!”
As he took the busted tire off, he mused, “You probably could have saved that tire if you hadn’t kept driving.” He looked at me. “You don’t want to stop on the bridge, though.” I shook my head. No, I didn’t.
He laughed. “I had a guy last week, stopped right in the middle of the bridge with his baby son in the back of his car. Yelling about how he was going to tell the authorities on me for directing him to continue to drive across the bridge to a safer location. I made sure he had all my information—full name, employee id number. I let him copy it all down.
“Then I just fixed him with a look, and he says, ‘This is a brand new Audi. I don’t want to ruin my rims.’”
My new friend stopped his wrench for a moment to show me how he leaned forward to get eye-to-eye with this driver.
“I said, ‘Sir, I have 3 sons. Do you think I would EVER stop in the middle of this bridge with my son in the car if there was any way I could help it? Do you realize what would happen if your car got hit by any one of these cars driving by? By any one of those semi-trucks?’ Then his wife pulls up behind him and he says, ‘That’s my wife.’”
He shook his head. “You had time to call your wife to come get your son, but you couldn’t drive off of this bridge to somewhere safe?!”
We chuckled together at this tale. The memory of a guy who couldn’t keep his priorities straight.
I tipped him generously and was soon enough on my way, driving 50 mph on my little spare on a stretch of highway where 75 mph the norm. Even the big work trucks, usually lumberingly slow to my mind, are whooshing past me today.
I decided to engage my hazard lights, to ease the friction between my discomfort and others’ frustration. Sorry sorry sorry I prayed as my fellow humans swerved around me. I am hyperaware of my slowness, the inconvenience.
Then, suddenly, I am tasting the bitter sting of the impatience I’ve aimed at other drivers across the years.
That very morning I’d been in a long line of cars at a stoplight chanting, “Green means GO! Green means GO!” in a mocking attempt to hasten the first cars along and catch the light before it turned red again.
And now, I am the hazard to be chanted against and sped around.
I have gone nearly 3 miles before I realize I am driving with a lump in my throat.
I’ve passed three other cars on the side of the road, folks having trouble. In hazard. Would I have even noticed them on any other day?
I think about my rescuer, who mentioned his coworker who’d left work early, abruptly, that day. The man has diabetes, a wife and two sons. He worried over the cause of this early departure.
I think about the terms we use in relationship to one another. We “invest,” we “evaluate,” we “move on.” We commodify and transactionalize community through our “network.” We impatiently render invisible those who won’t or can’t help us in our scramble to grab whatever “success” we can cobble together to prove we’re “enough.”
Turns out, I’m also the asshole with the messed up priorities. Trying to protect my little slice of achievement, throwing elbows and side-eye to anyone slowing me down along the way.
I pull over into the grocery store parking lot, and the lump in my throat has given way to heartbreak, tears. How have I not seen?
We are surrounded by angels, some of them wearing work boots.
We are here to be each other’s angels. Ministering to the invisible hazards we each carry. And we don’t even know it.
So, here is the call. My experiment:
This month, I will let the blink blink blink of the indicator lights along my way lead me into a deeper consideration of others—both strangers and loved ones. A challenge to remember and acknowledge the invisible hazards we are each carrying.
I want to allow each ‘tick tick tick’ of the tiny lights remind me that I’m called to be an angel. And to summon gratitude—thank you thank you thank you—for the many angels who are tending me along the way.