Thursday night i was downtown with friends at Fayetteville Street Tavern. There is a league of free poker games at various bars around town. No stakes, but you might win a gift certificate. There are a lot of interesting characters there, too. Anyway, i’m downtown, and it’s busy. Parking spots are limited. And on Fayetteville Street, they were setting up for Bikefest. It’s a busy place.
We parallel parked a couple of blocks from the bar. Had a few drinks, played some poker, and eventually busted. We ended up staying pretty late. We left about midnight and walked back to the car. My car was the only car remaining on a street that had formerly been lined with cars.
As we approached the car i noticed something was off. My eye was immediately drawn to my driver’s sideview mirror. Or rather, the fact that i no longer had one. I found pieces of it in the street Someone had either clipped me, or i guess possibly taken a baseball bat to my car for fun. I was annoyed, but not visibly so. This could be fixed.
We got in the car and commenced driving home. As we pulled into the road, i saw the red light on my dashboard that says “Brake Light”. So it appeared i had been sideswiped, and he had first hit my left taillight, probably scraped along the side of the car, and finished by demolishing my mirror. I had not noticed damage to the side of my car, but i had been so distracted by the missing mirror, i didn’t think to check the rest of the car. My agitation was growing.
Well, i wasn’t stopping to look until we got home. Or so i told myself. Unfortunately, a noise was growing and i slowly realized it was the sound of a flat tire. Halfway between the bar and home, on St Mary’s street heading toward Six Forks, i pulled off onto a side road. We got out and inspected the damage.
Yep, flat tire. The taillight cover was busted and the light itself didn’t work. The bumper was loose. There was a dent in the area next to the taillight, about the size of a dinner plate. A few scratches down the left side of the car. And of course the missing mirror. Well, at least the car was drivable – all we had to do was change the tire. And i know how to do this. I’ve had a few flat tires in my day.
We opened the trunk and got out the tools, and tried to get out the spare tire. It sits in a small tire-shaped well, and there is a big screw that goes through the donut hole in the middle to hold it in. Unfortunately, the screw would not move. No matter how hard we tried, we could not move it. We tried to leverage it with the tools we had in the car, but no luck. It was just screwed on too tightly.
And then, it started to rain.
At this point, my slight agitation became extreme agitation. The only plan i could form involved first getting the tire out. When that wasn’t possible, i simply did not know what to do.
And then…
Someone pulled up to the house across the street. Tall, well-dressed, mid 40s. He walked over to see what was wrong. We told him we had a flat, but didn’t have the right tools to get the too-tight screw undone. He told us to hang on, and shortly returned with a number of tools. In a jiffy he had the tire free. He then proceeded to assist further by removing the tire. He basically did all the work. In the rain. And before we knew it, the job was done and he was leaving. We learned his name was Jonathan, but that was it.
Well, all i can say is, THANK YOU JONATHAN!!! If it hadn’t been for you, the night would have been much longer. We would eventually have called a friend, who would have come to get us, and we would have fetched tools, and finally gotten the tire out and changed. Meanwhile the night would have been half gone, and no one would have been in a good mood. Thanks to you, Jonathan, my faith in humanity is restored. You help balance out the douchebags who run into other people’s cars and don’t take accountability for their actions. If there are people like you around, i think the world will be OK.
With the kindness of Jonathan, we were on our way. I’ll never forget his selfless act.
Tags: life
Behold, my ride for this week.