Road

(this is my first assignment for my humor writing class)



My friend once said, “Life is like a tire… sometimes your up, sometimes your down…but when your down, that’s when they run you over.”



It is this premise that I begin my tire story. Well, actually, it’s the story of my friend and his freeway flat tire. To start, I have to tell you that this friend of mine is a native Chinese Filipino.(this meaning he was chinese by descent but was born and raised in the Philippines) He migrated to Canada and now he is a Canadian-Chinese-Filipino migrant. (that is something to think about) My friend, let’s call him David, is a lanky fellow with no airs of masculinity in him. He has glasses and likes computers and any physical activity is far beyond his capabilities. Although he was thin, he was also suave with a boy-next door kind of appeal.



One day, David was driving down the freeway going to Washington from Vancouver. His family was loaded and he was driving a fancy sportscar. By freeway, I mean cars in full overdrive and barreling down the hard pavement of the continental US. (You might as well know, we don’t have any such freeways here in the Philippines~ with the amount of cars and traffic hindering any idea of speeding you might swirl around your head) Suddenly, he felt a jerk and knew his tire blew. There he was with miles of freeway ahead of him and a flat. He slowly drove to the side of the road, got out, inspected the damage and checked if he had a spare. (I have to note that this was a few years back when cellphones were at it’s infancy so it was not possible for him to call anybody- he had no cellphone)



Opening the trunk, he stared at open space. NO SPARE TIRE. He leaned back on his car and whipped out a cigarette.



Might as well have a cigarette..he thought. He sat back on the hood of his car, the stick of cigarette hanging on the edges of his lips as one by one, cars zoomed past him. He was wearing a sportshirt, washout jeans and sunglasses.. At some point, he might have imagined himself as James Dean with a cool car stuck by the side of the road. (the coolness of all of this not escaping his vivid imagination). He flicked the starter of his lighter..once, twice, three times with no signs of a light. His brows furrowed. He shook the lighter and tried again. Still, nothing. He held up the lighter and through the light of the sun, he realized that he ran out of lighter fluid.



Sh*T. No ride, no tire and no relief. As I said, when your down, that’s when you get run over by life. He got run over… twice!



In the end, he walked a few hours and a few miles to find a gasoline station and get some help. James Dean is laughing in heaven.