Kidding aside, I do think every person needs to know how to change a tire or belong to Triple A. I was working late one night on Hwy 114 in Dallas. I stayed late, as I often did, working on the advertising graphics for a little paper called Las Colinas People. It was a high-dollar neighborhood, where every working person left at about 5 if they had any damned sense.

I was working in my office, and I heard a knock at the front door. I found a woman, approximately my age with an 18-month child in tow, asking if there was a maintenance man around. I asked her what she needed. Her tire was flat.

"Hell," I said. "I can do that."

I asked her where her jack was. She didn't know. I asked her for her manual, which she gave to me like her maidenhead.

I found the jack, and the spare, and changed the tire in good order.

My boyfriend at the time drove up in his pretty gold Lexus SC400. "What's wrong?", he asked. "I had a flat tire," she said. "That sounds like a man's job," he said. I popped up over the edge of the fender, after tapping the wheel cover into place, and said, "Yeah?."