Remembering Inflation

My tire was a bit low when I went to ride my bike this morning, which led me to the appalling realization that I didn’t know how to properly attach the pump to inflate it. I could achieve just enough of a connection to hear that ominous hissing noise and then released more air with each stroke of the pump until finally I had succeeded only in creating an unequivocally flat tire. This was demoralizing. How could I not know how to do this? (Boy, would Christine mock me! And didn’t I deserve it?)

Eager to get some exercise before the rain came, I considered bailing on my usual bike and borrowing one of the others that are hanging in the garage. (We are bicycle-wealthy.) Unfortunately, the chosen bike was awkwardly suspended just above Monte’s car and I could too easily picture a whole range of scenarios, all of which involved damage to the car, injury to myself, and an irate husband.

I decided instead to go back to the house and solicit his assistance with the tire inflation. I pitched it as an opportunity to provide a tutorial, and once and for all I would pay close attention to his instructions and actually do it myself, and then I would be in possession of the knowledge and never have to feel embarrassed or dependent again. (At least not about this.)

He was a good sport and did not refer to me as Baby Huey. As we walked down to the garage, however, he did recall showing this to me on numerous occasions in the past. Then he very patiently assessed the situation, muttered about my bicycle’s general state of neglect, and observed the manure on the tires. “Do you deliberately ride through cow shit?” he asked. I hoped there would not be a bike-cleaning seminar attached to the tire inflation tutorial.

In any event, I quickly saw that my only mistake had been to omit a step. There is a lever thing that has to be turned upward to tighten the pump connection to the valve thing.

“Not up,” said Monte, demonstrating, “Flip it down.”

“That’s not down,” I protested. “The direction you just moved that thing is what I call up.”

“No, it’s down. Look what happens. Pay attention to the mechanism in here.”

Whatever.

So now I know how to do that. And I pumped the tire all the way to 40 and felt very competent.

“I want to be like this from now on,” I said, “A competent woman. Someone who knows how to fix things and do stuff. Like Jeanne.”

“Well then you’d have to learn a little about the way things work,” said Monte.

“On the other hand, maybe I’d be happy if I could just learn to dance.”

“Oh, that’s a useful goal at your age,” said Monte.

“Well, maybe not serious dancing, but I’ve gotta get some moves,” I said. “Just a few cool moves before I die. Maybe even one cool move that I could just do over and over.”

I was quite serious about this. Do you know what it’s like to go through life without knowing how to dance? It is way worse than not knowing how to fix a flat.

I turned up the volume on my iPod and did a few celebratory twists and contortions on the cement in front of the garage, the victory jig of a successful tire inflator and lover of life.Monte watched me in a bemused and indulgent way, if bemused and indulgent can be taken to mean affectionate pity.

"Can you tell I'm dancing? Do I have any cool moves?" I asked.

"Yeah. You look cool," said Monte, "A little bit. Like in a funny way."

Not about to be deflated, I mounted my trusty bicycle with its firm manured wheels and sped away.