Bogart said:
Gadzooks said:
Made an emergency run to the grocery store last night for juice boxes with Little 'Zooks. Come out of the store to find I have a flat tire. Now I'm as handy with car stuff as GM is with Netflix or TRE is with running with a horse mask. I was still dressed from work and it was officially past Little 'Zooks bedtime and I've been dealing with some pulled muscle in my back and I have a sore throat (I'll just assume I'm not dying) I was trying to put the spare donut tire on, but he POS car jack I had was working very well (keep in mind I'm an idiot when it comes to this stuff) A girl comes walking by with her groceries and a stroller with 2 babies and she offers to have her husband help me when he gets there to pick her up. I told her no but she was insistent and then she asked to use my phone because her's wasn't charged. She calls the husband and I hear her say "
we're ready, come get us, oh and when you get here get your jack out of the car and help this nice guy change his tire, he's in a suit and tie and he's getting dirty and he has his little son with him". So the husband pulls up and immediately gets his jack out tells me that he'll change the tire (I guess he could tell I was an idiot) He coudln't have been more than 25 years old. HIs car was a piece of junk and overall I was guessing this young family with one car was probably not doing great financially.
He mentioned that he just got out of work and I notice his shirt says a local cleaning company which I happen to know the owner. So I told him I was gonna call his boss and tell him what a great person he has working for him. At first he says, no don't do that, then he says, well ok my name is Justin. Meanwhile the wife is entertaining her babies and listening to Little 'Zooks tell her a story about how he won a fart contest in school today. I kinda stood there thinking about how nice these people were and if I would've done the same thing. I thought I wanted to do something else for them, and I thought "what would SLB do"... So I said to them "
these are the times I wished I carred around Panera gift cards". They were shuked. I asked them where they like to go out to eat and the wife said they don't really ever go out to eat. I told them I was gonna get them a gift card to a nice restaurant. The husband said no and not to bother but the wife said "someplace nice? Like Olive Gardnen?"

I said "I was thinking Arby's"... again they were shuked. I told them I was kidding but I'd get them something. The husband wouldn't give in at first, but finally he gave me his address. I just got off the phone with the kid's boss and told him what a great employee he has working for him and at lunch I'm gonna get an Olive Garden gift card for them and a Toys R Us gift card for their kids. This seems like something SLB would do, so I figure its the right thing to do.
This is really awesome.
I'm perhaps moderately better at fixing flat tires than I am installing Netflix (though that doesn't stop me from calling AAA whenever I do encounter a flat) so when I happened upon a mother at my sons' school who had a flat with no AAA, no idea how to fix it and a deadline to pick her young child up from daycare, it was GMs turn at bat for hero. In my very best George Costanza as Marine Biologist manner, I pulled out all the necessary parts from her trunk (non euphemism) and began putting on the spare. Now this was an unusually hot September day for Portland and since everybody knows one another at this school, a rather good sized crowd of other mothers gathered to watch the fat, white guy dressed in
slacks struggle with the jack, sweating like Michael Jordan in the 4th Q of a playoff game. It was pick-up time at school, so my sons, their sons and other kids began to join the crowd and suddenly, I felt all eyes upon me. And when I realized that i was jacking up her Honda in the wrong spot (again, no euphemism),
slightly bending her car's frame in the process, I quickly and quietly tried to adjust the jack to the right spot before anybody could notice. Of course, it took all of 2 seconds before my know-it-all son said "Hey dad, did you just dent her car with that thing?"
Fortunately, the damage to her car was very minimal and she didn't really even care/notice. Was just relieved to get her spare tire on so she could get on her way. She even dropped a bottle of nice wine off to me later that week. All the other moms told my wife about it, so that was good too. It was, perhaps, my finest hour.