When I'm Right. . .

Last month I was up in the mountains for a weekend that turned into ten days, 'member? Because our car was broken and then it was more broken, and I had a lot of stress eating I needed to do. In fact I moved through all the five Kübler-Ross stages of grief: shock, stress eating, cussing, whining, and finally watching "The Wire."

Then some friends from California arrived and everything was groovy, we had our van and were going to redeem the other car after the weekend was over. Then, the afternoon of our last full day up there, I walked out of the store into the parking lot and happened to really look at our front tires. I am not in the habit of looking at my tires, but even I could tell they didn't look good. Maybe I had in mind that Elle had had a tire blowout on the highway not long before, I don't know.

I drove back up to the house and told Matt, "Those front tires on the van are not safe. I don't really want to drive them home to Atlanta tomorrow and I'm sure not driving them to Florida the day after that." Matt was like, "Hmmm, well, they're not going to blow out anytime soon, but you're right, they do need to be replaced, so I'll see what I can do in the morning before we leave." He didn't exactly say, "Okay precious, I don't share your feeling of urgency, but if it will make you feel better," but that was sort of the mood, you know?

So the next morning was tightly scheduled because we had to leave the mountain house in some kind of order, pick up our other car, and make it down to Atlanta in time to pick up Matt's mom from the airport. So we found a tire place on the internet that looked okay (it had seven five-star reviews in Google!) and Matt said he would be there when it opened. Our friend Mike offered to go with him, I think because it sounded like a manly outing and in my experience, guys don't like to hang around the house with the women and children when there's something that involves tools or danger or picking up pizza. So, even though Matt didn't think it was completely necessary, bright and early, they set off for the tire place.

And they got a flat tire before they were off the mountain.

With the two of them, it was no problem to put the spare tire on and roll along to the tire place, where they were taken care of promptly and sent on their way again. And when Matt got home and told me they had a flat, did I say "I told you so?" Reader, I did not. I had no need to. There was no righter I could be and no need to say it myself. I just stood there clad in Righteousness.

Later I asked Matt if he thought the tire place deserved all their five star reviews, and what was so five-star about the place. He said that they had put on four new tires and balanced them in 25 minutes. And he said that they had a relaxed sort of casualness about their operations, that you drove your own car onto the lift, and that they seemed to have no problem if customers wanted to stand around in the garage, or smoke in the garage, or remove their shirts in the garage. You know, friendly-like. In Sylva, NC, that is five-star service.

Reader, have you ever been proven so delightfully right? The moment still savors, you know?