For The Widows In Paradise; For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti

Every perfect day needs a topper-- an apex from which every blissful moment can delicately unfold before beginning its descent. But what happens when the day is flat lined on a negative scale with no hope of a point of increase?
Your tires get slashed.
It was bad that I could not find my carpool. It was worse that I was stuck in slippery heels without any way to contact my friends whom I was supposed to drive. But the climax-- the minimum point of my day, the anti-apex, if you will-- became tragedy when I coatlessly found the New Yorker sitting on a slope that allowed the rim of the back tire to kiss the asphalt in a most threatening manner.
Someday I would simply like to go home after school. That's it. No unclosable doors, no dead engines. Someday I would like to hop in my car and have it take me places without running the risk of suicide from an imploding radiator.
So I passed this anticlimax by standing in shock next to a car with peeling red paint and 'YSLER' glued in rusted silver letters across the back, utterly at a loss for action.
I decided that putting on a decent facade of knowledgeable tire-changing skills for the sophomores congregating on the driving range would be a good start. I opened up the trunk, where I knew a spare tire was kept. I pulled on it. It would not give. I tugged on the jack next to it. I have found that in calamities biceps and arm muscles are extremely useful. If nothing else, they give comfort in their existence. Mine exist, but only for a taut allowance of minimal tasks-- such as holding a spoon and waving at people in the hallways. My arms are not meant for manual labor.
With half my body immersed in the open trunk, my bare knees anchored on the sagging bumper, and my sleeves rolled past the elbow, I pulled and pulled at that blasted tire. By this time I had grime on my legs and hands, and was feeling extremely frustrated.
And then he came, an enormous angel who was extremely scary and simultaneously wonderful.
"Well, that sucks!" said Coach Gross, as he leaned over me to inspect what little progress I was able to make with the immovable tire.
He moved it with one hand, picked it up like he was picking up a plastic ball. He raised and lowered and unscrewed and basically lifted the entire car, while I stood back, shivering in my stupid little pink heels, feeling the negativity that comes with feminine helplessness-- or perhaps just my weakness and failure as a human being.
As I was driving home slowly on my newly changed, bike-sized back rear tire, I reflected on the goodness of human nature. Nobody had to stop to help me. I could have stood abandoned in the parking lot for a long, long, time.
Every perfect day has an apex.