Tire Sabotage

"Dada, I think the car has a flat tire!" Carson exclaims as he runs around to the passenger side of the car.

"Huh? Why do you think that?" I ask as I try to get him to get in the car for summer camp.

"Oh no, there's no flat tire," he says as he walks back around to get in the car.

"Oh, okay. Let's go. Come on."

Carson gets in the car and we go to camp. I don't think anything of what he said. He says weird, random shit all the time.

The next day Alanna gets back from dropping Carson off.

"The car was complaining to me today about low tire pressure in the front right tire," she explains. "It looks low too."

Wait a sec, that's the same tire that Carson was going around and checking yesterday, I think. 😮 Did that little boy prophesize this? Or...more likely (?), did he do it himself? He has been especially testy lately – doing things to get a rise out of us – just to see what we'll do. Did he graduate his prodding into full-on vandalism now? Is he sneaking out in the night to cause chaos? I remember we have been missing a kitchen knife...

"What the hell, Chad? Are you not going to answer me?" Alanna yells. Oh right, I've just been staring at her as I think these thoughts. "Didn't you just buy some kind of tire air machine at Costco?"

Oh yeah, I did just buy that thing – just for an occasion like this. I'll finally get a chance to use it after impulse buying it.

"Can you go use that please before I have to go pick Carson up later today?"

"Oh, uh, yeah, okay. Right, it probably just needs air." I finally speak after staring at her this whole time.

This conversation is representative of how a lot of conversations go in our marriage.

Another day goes by and Alanna drives to the Northshore to meet a client. She gets back and immediately starts bitching complaining.

"Chad! The tire pressure monitor was yelling at me again after you just filled it! I was scared driving across that bridge. Come look at the tire, it looks way flatter than yesterday."

I go outside and try to fill it again and it's down to 10 PSI (from 35 yesterday).

"Welp, it seems like this tire is dead. I think it's time to get a new car," I tell Alanna.

She looks at me and immediately agrees. With no further discussion, we both go inside and go to sleep.

The next day, we head to the Honda dealership. We have plans to go look at Hyundai, Volvo, and Volkswagen – maybe not all in one day – but ya know, over the next couple of days.

Naturally, four hours after arriving at the Honda dealership, we leave with a new Pilot Black Edition.

‌We take the new car to go pick up Carson from summer camp. We dropped him off with him having no idea what we were going to do that day. I drive up eagerly waiting to see his confused face when they call his name in the carpool and he looks around and sees us in some weird car.

"Huh, what car is this?" he says as he climbs in.

"We got a new car!" Alanna tells him.

"What? I didn't know I was getting a new car today." He starts climbing around in the back looking around. "Wow, this car has two windows on the roof! Our other car only had one window on the top. And this one is bigger! I can see the trees!"

He seems excited.

We put him in his car seat which is behind the driver's seat now (since this car has bucket seats instead of one long bench). He immediately discovers things we didn't anticipate when we moved his car seat.

"Oh, I can reach the window button now. I can open the window whenever I want!" He immediately starts opening and closing the window as we drive along. He does it the entire trip home.

"Does this thing open the door?" He grabs for the door handle while we are travelling 70 mph on I-10. Did this thing come with child locks?

At bedtime, the weight of the day starts to set in.

"Mama, I think I'm going to miss our old car," Carson says with a tear in his eye. "Where is it now? Is it inside somewhere? Who is going to have it now? I didn't get to say goodbye."

Alanna comforts him by telling him all cars go to live on farms where they can drive free when they die – or something like that.

I tell him the truth.

We had to get a new car because our old car broke in a slight way and we throw things away when we get tired of them.

Life lesson successfully instilled.