Joel Ramirez

On Flat tires

As the door closed and the engine of my mom’s truck faded away from the house, my mind began to race. One of the choices a teenager, in my position, would make in his life as soon as he or she learns how to drive. should I take the car out for a ride? A mini-van to be more exact. The oldest vehicle in my family that had been with us since we moved to our home years ago. The thing is I had just started to drive, and my confidence wasn’t at its fullest. My aunt was eyeing me, eyeing the car right before they left to my uncles house. I almost wish she’d taken the keys so I wouldn’t gat any ideas, but they were still there hanging, taunting, daring me to snatch them up.

It was only about 10 minutes after my family left, when my friend Juan came by to hang out for awhile. That was about the time my ambition started to kick in. Was it even possible for me to take the van unnoticed? I told Juan the keys. A grin crossed both of our faces. “Well, I guess it’s okay as long as nothing happen to the car.” he said.

That was all the convincing I need. I turned off the television , and made sure everything in the house was locked: standard procedures whenever I leave to do mischief. The two little voices in me stopped arguing, and silently waited for me to start the van to life. When it started up, the heat inside of it was unbearable. A drop of sweat fell down my head. I started to get nervous which made the heat worse inside.

It stared out slow, backing the car out. I was so careful for the fear that I could possibly mess up, I could have balanced on a high beam. I checked the mirrors multiple times out of paranoia. I went relatively slow when it came to accelerating the vehicle, and I tried hard as hell not to gat on any busy streets. I was rolling down Mcgee Street slowly, turning my head left to right obsessively at every stop came across. By my rigid posture in the driver seat anyone could tell I was newbie.

My first stop was to my friend Luis’s house. I hadn’t gone very far, it was only across the street from Longfellow middle school. I drove around his block twice looking for a place to park. I had to make sure that there weren’t cars in front or in back of me when I was parking that I could hit either one and suffer the consequences. As soon as I finished my first parallel parking job ever by myself, I jumped out of the van and stood proud of my accomplishment. I gloated in front of Juan of my achievement in successfully breaking a rule punishable by my worst nightmares. Although I had gone a few blocks from my house, I still felt a tight squeeze of guilt for the deception I placed on my trusting mom.

We headed towards Luis’s door to slickly tell him I had taken my moms van with out her consent. I did all this just to show off as though we were still in the fifth grade, jumping off the structure to see who was the bravest. He wasn’t alone; there were three others in his room clumped in front of his computer. No doubt they were working on their rapping careers. He got up to greet us at the door. As I walked in the room I noticed it was still pretty messy, the only thing organized was his computer area and his booth with the microphone, were his groups magic happens. ( I guess anything is possible when your in high school and will do things you never thought you would ). I told him about the van.

“Damn really I never thought you’d ever in your life think about doing that.” he laughed.

“Well I guess you can never tell that in the quiet ones can you.” I joked.

“What do you plan to do now that you got a car?” he asked.

I told him probably take it back home. I really just wanted to go out and do all the crazy things teenagers do with their cars, hot box, drag race, and intimates moments with a girl. With the limited time I had I knew it would be more then impossible to accomplish that list. I almost tempted to invite them to chill, and cruise around but I knew that would be a bad idea. I stuck around for a good while. We joked, listen to some of his group’s music, and then bailed.

I didn’t know were to go after that. Juan and I jumped in the van to discuss our next destination. It was pretty hard to think to about where to go, especially when your mother could pop back home any moment calling you asking were the car is at because she has already put two and two together. We drove around Berkeley thinking on what to do to kill some time. It came to me while driving around Longfellow for the sixth time.

“We could visit Dei?” I told Juan.

Her house was across Longfellow and it would be a great opportunity to show off. We promptly made our way across Sacramento Street to her side of the street. Juan on the phone with her instructing her to go outside and wait. That’s when my fear of something going horribly wrong came true. I was looking for a place to park my delicate vehicle. I saw a nice open area with zero cars around and under a tree were the shade would cool the inside. It was my mistake to have parked in that seemingly harmless area. As I came in to position the car parallel to the curb I strayed far to in and hit it. There was a three second noise that sounded like a tire had just deflated. My mouth and eyes opened wide in shock . Juan too was in shock, he looked at me and I knew then I was fucked.

How could this have happened?! Was it karma for lying to my mom? Having way to much fun? It didn’t matter after that what happen happened, even though I wished it didn’t. I then remembered a saying I got from an advertisement for a video game “for every choice a consequence”, and how true it was. I guess I had done wrong and got a punishment by some unseen force. This would have been the end of me.

I got out of the car in a panic to see the damaged that had been done to the wheel. I cursed out loud to my misfortune and wished to die! Dei came out to see what had happened.

“Wow how do you plan on fixing that?” she asked.

I couldn’t answer her. I didn’t know what to do, and I was too hysterical to think of a solution. When hope seemed lost, Juan asked if I had a spare tire. A light flickered on in my head and common sense came back to me. I calmed down and looked for the things I would need to fix a tire. After finding all the ingredients needed for a fresh tire change, I moved the car farther out for space to work a miracle. But even changing a tire had its obstacles. I looked at the jack and was confused where, exactly, this contraction would be placed. A man passed by. He must have looked at my confused face, because he offered to help. “ See what you got to do is find a solid place to stick the jack under.” That was all the advice he gave, leaving me to get on my knees looking for a ‘solid’ spot. I found it under the sliding door, and decided to place the jack under there. I pumped up the jack like I was inflating a bike tire, but all the pressure couldn’t hold up the van, and ended up falling to its original position. I finally found another spot just in front of the flat tire. We finally got the jack problem taken care of, but as soon as we got out of one hole we just fell head first into another one.

I had gotten the spare tire out of the van and was happy that the process was almost done with. When I got the tire to the empty spot were it was going to be placed I noticed it wasn’t going to fit. Since I was changing the tire outside in the street the van wasn’t on a flat pavement. (meaning that the side I popped was more to the ground then the other side). Time was passing by fast, and I had to think quickly about how to fix the problem. I came to the solution out of the blue. “We should flatten the spare tire.” Go figure. We released most of the air out the tire and got it flat enough to push it on to the empty spot and screw it back on. After that, my final conflict arose, How do I inflate the spare? I could have driven to the gas station and filled it back up but I didn’t want to take the chance of the spare tire popping as well. It was getting late and I was nervous that I would get the dreaded call from my mom. Dei remembered that her neighbor had a electric tire pump. I would have begged him to let me use it. I went to the man’s house to ask him if I could use the only thing that could keep me among the living. He was a nice old man that told me he had gotten into the same situation millions of times with the same curb. We hooked up the contraption to the tire and played the waiting game.

It was finally done. The longest hour I ever had to endure was over, the wheel was back in place, and I could go home. We said our farewells to Dei and left. Inside the car, me and Juan started to joke about what had happened to us, laughing at every detail from start to finish.

“Dude, what type of trouble do you get yourself into?” he joked.

“I don’t know, but this has got to be the worse so far.” I said laughing

We got home, but no one was there yet. I was so relieved that my mom wasn’t home, so I sat down and relaxed. Then Juan decided to leave to go of some party; if I hadn’t gotten the flat tire that day, I would have offered a ride. I was so spooked about what had happen that it would be awhile before I tried something like that again. The only thing I could do is wait for my mom to come back home in a good mood. While I waited, I went outside to look at the only wheel that didn’t match the rest. I kept thinking how lucky I was that nothing worse had happen to me. One of my aunts then appeared out of thin air, she looked at me, then at the van. I told her what had happened to the van. All she could do was laugh, not asking any questions.

“I thought your mom was the one who took the van since it wasn’t here” she said.

She left and I sat back inside. My family returned from my uncles house, and I was nervous to confess what had happened. They walked right pass the van and didn’t notice the out of place wheel. I knew I had to tell her soon; I kept thinking the worst if didn’t. Even if I was able to cover it up, what if something happened on the road and my family was stranded? I couldn’t let that happen, I was raised better then that.

I finally mustered up the courage to tell her what happened when I took her to see the wheel, she was smiling and didn’t seem mad. We went back inside and she told me not to it ever again. I was relieved that she wasn’t mad at me; the world could finally keep spinning.

“I knew something like this would happen, I was saw him eyeing the keys before we left,” said my aunty as if she had predicted it.

Later that day I went out with my mom to pick up my aunt from her job. I got to drive all the way to get her. During the drive my mom decided to release some of her anger. It was nothing worst than from last time. She expressed that she was the one who would have to pay for new tires. I was once again relieved.