Sorry, Feminists. There are some things I like the man in my life to take care of. Mowing the lawn. Resetting the circuit breakers. Anything to do with my car. Other women may merely need assistance checking vehicle fluids or jump starting a dead battery, but my helplessness extends to parallel parking and inflating my tires. In fact, I recently learned that I am physically incapable of filling tires with air.
For a few weeks, my tire pressure warning light kept coming on. So, Ryan kindly inflated my tires whenever we were out together. Finally, I decided I needed to learn to be self-sufficient. I'm an adult for goodness sake. I should be able to fill up my own gosh darn tires all by myself. The next time we stopped by a gas station, I insisted he teach me how to use the tire gauge and air pump thingamabobber, and supervise my inflation.
My training went something like this:
"Am I doing it right now?"
"Nope. You hear that sound? That's the air leaving your tire."
"Shit. I'm still letting air out?"
"Here, hold it like this."
"Like this? Is this right?"
"Not if you still hear the air coming out. It should sound like this. Hold it at this angle."
"What angle? I'm holding it the exact same way you did."
"Straighten out your wrist."
After 10 minutes of almost deflating my entire tire, and running back three times to ask the scowling attendant to please turn on the air again, Ryan expertly finished the job in about 20 seconds, and I simply screwed the caps back on. So much for gaining confidence in my self-sufficiency. Now I know without a doubt that if my tire pressure is low, I should not attempt to fill it myself, unless my goal is to flatten it the rest of the way.
I took my car to the good folks at America's Tire, who inspected and patched my tire for free (the culprit was a screw). Now, at least for a while, I don't need a man to chaperone me to the gas station. You'll be happy to know that I am perfectly capable of pumping my own gas, thank you very much.
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4 comments:
You will be pleased to note that I have never once in my TEN YEARS of driving pumped my own tires full of air. Not once. Never ever.
I should really learn though. I'm not sure Will knows how to check the gauge (he doesn't have a car) - though maybe that's one of those secret "man skills" they all have, and he's just keeping it hidden.
All I know is my gauge is only checked when my car gets taken in for a checkup (which I do per the maintenance schedule, don't worry). Or that one time I ran over a nail and I took it to the 76 station. The guy did show me a trick of spraying the tire with soapy water to find the hole...bubbles will kind of bubble up where the hole is!
Yaaaaaay feminism!
Shonelle, I laughed so hard at this because it sounded like something I would have done! I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree! Thanks to Grandma, I can also pump my own gas! I miss the good old days, when there were only full-serve gas stations!
Love,
Mom
While I do know how to check my tire pressure, I still believe some things are best left to the men in our lives to do. But if you're interested in learning how to do it without pissing off the gas station attendants, head over to our house; you can use Kevin's pancake compressor and tire gauge to practice.
You should take note of certain gas stations that don't need an attendant to turn on the air for you =) It's what I do since I hate rushing it!
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