Buy American

The older I get, the less I care about trivia. And what I have come to understand is that most of what occupies most of us, most of the time, is trivia. Take, for example, getting a flat tire. Usually it's a royal pain in the ass but one that is fleeting and requires little beyond elbow grease or, lacking that, membership in AAA. The spare gets installed and you are on your way.

Not when you own a BMW. An expensive BMW that's got all the bells and whistles. Like it senses when you drift over the painted yellow line and gives you a little buzz in your seat. And the speed you're driving is digitally projected onto the windshield, alongside the speed limit for whatever road you are currently on. Cool, right? But God forbid you get a flat tire, like my husband did last Friday. That's right, today is Monday and he got a flat last Friday and his fancy-schmancy car will be ready tomorrow.

In the interim I had to go rescue him after he had his car towed (there's that AAA membership) to a Ford dealership two miles from our home, where they ultimately could not fix it because A, there was no spare tire and B, there's some kind of special tool required, made in Germany so you know it's authentic.

So today my husband, who I had to drive to work this morning and then pick up later to get his car from the Ford dealership, drove his BMW, flat tire and all, the twenty or so miles to the BMW dealership, after which he had to procure a rental car to drive himself home and then back there tomorrow to pick up his car with its flat tire fixed.

Those Germans. Somehow they managed to design and build complicated train lines leading to death chambers where they gassed millions of people, but changing a flat tire is a whole big deal.