Riding On The Donut

So we are driving down the street and when we pull up to the stop light the car in front and to the right is what one might call well used. The paint is faded and chipped in places. There appears to be quite of bit of dirt on it. The stereo is playing in a loudly, yet the quality of the sound is rather poor. Where the left rear tire ought to be is what is often referred to as the donut.

The auto manufacturing industry in it's zeal to increase cargo capacity and reduce cost has long since stopped the practice of supplying a full sized spare tire. In the place of the spar tire is an object hat is about a third the size of a normal tire (and probably a quarter of the cost). It is commonly called a donut. I have no idea why.

Ideally the donut is suppose to take a person from the place where there original tire failed directly to a place where they can have this tire replaced. This is supposed to be a trip of maybe fifteen or twenty miles at most. Reality rarely works this way.

Tires go out at the worst possible times. They don't wait for the weekend when you have no plans. No they fail on the way to work or on the way to pick up the kids from soccer. The tire fails on the way home from time with the mistress. When the tire fails we say, "(Explicative Deleted, I do not have time for this!" The donut is thrown on the car and we finish our errands. Days go by and the donut is still on the car. This emergency measure that was never, ever meant to be used for any length of time sits on the car and we say things like, "Well I can make a quick trip down to the gas station for milk" or "I swear I'm going to get this taken care of tomorrow, it just has to get me through my errands today."

Sometimes you look at a car like the one I noticed the other day and you wonder if the person is too poor to afford a replacement tire (On a used car a replacement tire can conceivably be as much as half of the down payment. A very large economic burden for the paycheck to paycheck life) or is this person just to stupid to be concerned about the fact that he or she is riding on the donut. People just don't think. It is as if they expect the magic tire fairy to appear when the donut finally fails and leaves em stranded with no means to move their vehicle without calling for a tow.

Somehow I think I could probably translate this into a life philosophy book where in a person examines his or her life and ask the question, "Do I have a spare, or am I riding on the donut?"

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