Nine. Actu­ally make that ten. Ten peo­ple and one dog.

And so this is how it all hap­pened. After din­ner yes­ter­day, dri­ving back with a car full of girls I sud­denly heard a weird clank­ing noise com­ing from some­where. Actu­ally, it would be unfair to say I heard it. One of the girls did : I was busy chatting.

I decided to stop and inves­ti­gate where the noise of com­ing from. That’s when I noticed the right rear tire : it looked exactly like the Kolkota Knight Rid­ers team after yesterday’s defeat. Dejected, out of air and fully down.

Now let me tell you that I have quite a lot of knowl­edge of tire chang­ing : in the­ory though. I remem­ber my last three flats in three years (aver­ag­ing one a year). The first one, in the early days was when I refused to believe that such things could hap­pen to me. Thank­fully, I had just caught up with a friend and parted ways. Before he could get any fur­ther away, I placed my dis­tress call. Friend arrived, changed tire in ten min­utes and I was all set to go! It seems easy, I am think­ing.

The sec­ond time it hap­pened, it was in office and my very nice col­league, despite being dressed in busi­ness for­mals, changed it for me. I made copi­ous notes — I was just begin­ning to get a hang of this tire chang­ing business.

The third time it hap­pened, it was at a busy junc­tion. I had a friend with me who help­fully sug­gested we seek help at the petrol pump just ahead. Now why did I not think of that? Any­way, about 15 min­utes later, it was all done. A rather elderly gen­tle­man at the pump took pity on us and helped. I made quick notes (again) as to where the dif­fer­ent imple­ments were being placed so I knew exactly how to do this the next time.

This brings us back to last night : my fourth flat. The girls had already begun to panic a bit, but I assured them that this is not a national emer­gency. We were pass­ing a petrol bunk and L and M walked across to ask for some help but had to come back empty handed. They were clos­ing down and no one had han­dled a span­ner in their lives.

This is where I had a idea. Let’s drive as slowly as pos­si­ble to T’s house, about a kilo­me­ter away and then wait for T’s hubby to arrive and help us. Bril­liant! A fool­proof plan, except that T’s hubby was out some­where too. But no wor­ries, we could wait. We weren’t in a hurry to go anywhere.

I steered the car as slowly as pos­si­ble until we were finally in front of T’s house. Since T’s hubby showed no signs of arriv­ing, I decided to take things (and the span­ner) into my own hands.

Unfor­tu­nately, I had com­pletely for­got­ten where the dia­mond shaped imple­ment that lifts up the car actu­ally goes. Help­ful sug­ges­tions were floated around, none of which really turned out to be very help­ful. I turned the span­ner every way pos­si­ble to turn the imple­ment (what the hell is it called?!). But to no avail.

This is when M caught a com­plete stranger (who was zip­ping away on a bike) for help. Do you know any­thing about any­thing, she asks the poor zapped soul. Okay, that’s not exactly what she asked but it was pretty close. This young guy looked like he had been asked a really tough physics ques­tion. No, he had no idea as he had never changed a tire before. Or even seen the instru­ments used to change one.

He did how­ever vol­un­teer to hang around — it was rather late in the night and appar­ently there was a drunk per­son in the vicin­ity. I was very impressed with his chival­rous spirit : but it didn’t get us too far in the tire chang­ing process.

T then decided to try the “call a neigh­bour” option. So a big hunk of a guy walks out of her gate, with a really excited look­ing dog. Neigh­bour and dog how­ever main­tain safe dis­tance from the car : none of them hav­ing changed a tire before.

Mean­while, we were actu­ally mak­ing a lit­tle bit of progress. A dri­ver who was wait­ing some­where nearby made an appear­ance and help­fully sug­gested that I was plac­ing the ele­vated thingy all wrong. “Elli, elli” he says. Since he didn’t speak much of any other lan­guage, we com­mu­ni­cated in sign and sur­mised that we had to lift up the wheel 2 inches from the ground. Super — things were going well.

This is when the bike guy stepped in (finally he was being help­ful) and loos­ened the wheel nuts. Who­ever screwed them on so tight, I am won­der­ing? I need to do more strength train­ing if I have to get these things off.

M at this point, decides that it is a national emer­gency and calls for more help : her sis­ter. Wait, it’s not just the sis­ter. It’s her sister’s friend too. None of these peo­ple though actu­ally know how to do it.

So now there are 5 girls, M’s sister’s friend, the clue­less bike guy, the help­ful dri­ver and the hunky neigh­bour (and his excited dog) : all gath­ered to change a tire. At this cru­cial junc­ture, T’s hubby arrives. Oh, I’ve done this many times he says breezily. Thank God, I am think­ing with my hands full of grime, feel­ing like a failed mechanic. Some­one who actu­ally knows in which direc­tion to turn the spanner!

He quickly maneu­vers the jack (yes, I think that’s the name!), ele­vates it to the right level, opens the poor deflated tire and voila : the new tire is now on.

It has now been over an hour that we’ve been strug­gling and it’s nearly mid­night. The clue­less (but very help­ful, thank you!) guy has zipped off. Hunk and dog dis­ap­pear real­iz­ing they weren’t really con­tribut­ing to the scheme of things. Dri­ver goes off to find his own car. And we have crossed over to the next day : inci­den­tally T’s birth­day. T’s hubby has brought her a sin­ful choco­late cake. We sing happy birth­day, par­take of cake and then clutch our tum­mies contentedly.

Who­ever thought a flat tire would lead to choco­late cake? But I am not com­plain­ing. I am now prepar­ing myself for the next one. I’m 99% sure I’ve got it this time. I just hope it’s not the front tire.