Let me set the scene for you. It is your average Saturday morning and after looking around my house in search of foodstuffs I head over to the parents to raid their pantry. So just another normal Saturday so far. I get to the parents and am enjoying my Pop-Tart when I am put to work moving a mattress that my mom is donating to a good cause. I am fine with doing this kind of labor for food program, it has served be well in the past. Then I am asked to go with Russ and Jeff over to my Grandmas to pick up a few things that she needs taken to the dump. Again not a huge deal and the three of us load into the truck and head over the railroad, sorry no river and woods, to Grandma's house. Then it is back to the parents where my Mom decides to take the stuff to the dump right then and recruits the three of us, with an offer of lunch, to help unload when we get there.
Everything is going to plan and as a bonus we are not charged to get into the dump. Why? No idea maybe it is because we are only dropping stuff off that can be recycled, I don't know and we didn't wait around for the nice dump lady to change her mind. We pull into the drop off area at the dump where a large bearded fellow tells us to take the old electronics over to the far wall and back up to drop them off in bins. He tells my Mom not to worry about the glass, just back over the pieces, as they won't pop the tires of the truck. So she does as she is told and backs up by the bins on the far wall. We can feel the truck going over the glass and it meets a little hesitation. Russ, in the front with my Mom, tells here to just gun it since he assumes that the truck is just battling for friction over the glass, so she does. We get out of the truck and I instantly hear the sound of hissing air but don't think anything of it as we are out the dump and there are plenty of other noises and smells to distract oneself. Then the two fellows next to us tell us that they think we popped a tire and then the four of us all see it at once, the instrument of the tires demise...
...What is it you may ask. Well it is none other then the much talked about kitchen sink! Turn this piece over and you can see what used to be a kitchen sink, or at least what is left of it. And what is left is a nice sharp point that infiltrated the inside of the tire in no time what so ever. The hesitation mentioned before was not a lack of traction due to glass but the tire trying it's best to beat the infamous sink. The tire lost! Now for the fun part of this story. We are in my Dad's relatively new truck that none of us have spent much time with, let alone enough time to go over it's standard tire changing procedures. We find the tire rods, jack and spare tire and set about changing the tire. By this time my Mom is on the phone with my Dad, who works with tires on a daily basis while Russ sets to work jacking up the truck and Jeff and I work on getting the spare out from under the truck. Now here is the part where I tell you I have changed a tire before...on a car...never a big full size truck. Russ and Jeff are in the same boat. Jeff is now talking to my Dad trying to find out how the spare drops down and says something about putting the key into the cup holder, which is when I take the phone away from him. Turns out the nice folks at Ford, fearing a rash of spare tire thefts, have locked the spare up under the truck. You have to insert the key into what I always assumed was the electrical inputs for towing a trailer and insert the tire rod into a hole about 6 inches behind said lock to lower the spare. That part done we head over to help Russ with the jack. Remember before when I said none of us were familiar with changing a tire on a truck? Not anymore. After some trial and error we go the truck jacked up and the tire changed, all the while we were on the ground at the dump and now covered in what I will hope is dirt but am sure is a mixture of many, many things that I don't want to know.
It was just another Saturday where we learned that my Mom doesn't know how to change a tire and has a fear of the new tire flying off the car once it is back in motion. This fear we learned, is the result of having lived through that scenario when she was younger with her parents. We laughed, we yelled (in what we decided was a kind way), and about an hour later then planned, we ate lunch covered in dump dust! It was just another day at the dump! Thanks bearded man for telling us not to worry about glass popping the tire but failing to mention the sharp pointed edge of the kitchen sink right next to the glass.
