I must admit this story is a bit embarrassing to relate to strangers and family alike. Relate it I must, however, to make the argument of this post. Today I managed to park my car on top of a massive brick, somehow, thanks to my stubbornness. Sometimes I am very very stubborn, and today I paid dearly for this bad composition of character.

I really wanted to park in that place and so I ignored the noise coming from under the car and just settled on top of the humungous brick. When I got back to the car after running some errands, I discovered that the brick had settled precisely in the middle of the car’s lower body, and that the car would not budge.

What to do, what to do…

I resolved to try to move the car a bit with all its might, so the brick would sort of move out of the way. Then the noise returned, obviously, and a man came running to me, yelling at me to stop moving the car. I stopped, and got out of the car, and looked at him. He scanned the situation under the car and judged it very, very grave. He then reproached me (a total stranger, remember) and confessed he “cannot understand how I did not see the brick when I parked.”

I couldn’t help but notice a big, old, green heart-shaped tattoo on his left arm. There was an arrow piercing through the heart, too. I paced around Havana Brown, expecting some miracle to deliver her and/or an announcement from the stranger that he can do nothing to help.

But fear not. My anonymous tattooed chevalier asked for a jack and I exclaimed that I “think I have one somewhere in the trunk,” to which he responded by asking me to open the trunk. Then my savoir fetched the jack and lifted Havana up, up, up — so much up that I thought she would fall on him and kill him once the brick is removed.

I was silent the whole time. There was nothing for me to say, really. The anonymous helper called for his friend from time to time and they referred to me in the third person, never talking to me in my face. Of course, this was no time to pull any feminist stunts, so I remained silent.

This good person stayed with me for fifteen minutes and saved Havana Brown. I was, and still am, amazed at the goodness of his spirit. I know I could not have done much about the situation, since I tried moving another brick (which was not stuck under anything) and I couldn’t. Sometimes you just have to have muscles, and not a brain, to do things.

In conclusion, this is one instant where I am indebted to my patriarchal society. I did not even have to ask for help, help came running to me, and stayed with me until I was OK.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.