The last word on my Murphy’s Law day

Flat tireHere’s the wrap-up on my Murphy’s Law day. After waiting three hours in the high school parking lot (and only fellow Bay Areans will be impressed that the temperature was 86 degrees during this wait), I finally got towed to the Ford dealership, which treated me with exceptional kindness.

Even their kindness couldn’t shield me from the blow:  I learned that I had shredded my tire and, owing to the tires exceptional green-ness, it would cost $200 to replace. I’m singularly fortunate, however, that I can pay $200 on demand without suffering severe economic hardship.  I therefore paid and, finally, was on my way.

But the story doesn’t end there. My daughter was unaware of this whole drama. When she came home from school she had a story to tell.

It seems that one of the pet peeves students and teachers at the school have is that people without permits hog parking spaces on the school lots. (I should note here that I wasn’t hogging a space but had, instead, pulled into a kind of “dead” space, where I interfered with nothing and no one.) For that reason, everyone was absolutely thrilled when a story went around the school: “The school finally cracked down on people parking illegally in the lot! An old lady’s car got towed away on a big flatbed tow truck.”

I leave it to those who know me to determine whether I can rightly be described as “an old lady.” I prefer to think of myself as being on the slightly, ever so slightly, shady side of peak middle age.