What is so sad about the title of this post is that "treated like a female" seems to be understood.

Wednesday, Dr. Jay and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. We went out for a nice dinner followed by a wonderful walk through a pre-American graveyard and finally back to our car for a ride. Within 20 seconds of starting the ride, I was going around a rotary, a traffic circle in most parts of the country, when someone failed to yield. I moved too much to the left and hit the curb, blowing my tire. Great. I drove a tad bit further and pulled into the parking lot near the North Bridge in Concord, MA. We got the jack out, placed it in the right spot, someone came over to help, we got 4 out of 5 lugs off. Then we all stared at the 5th. It was a locking lug nut. Fine. We searched the ENTIRE car. No locking lug nut key (It looks like a long nut that has a funny pattern that goes over the locking lug nut). Ended up calling AAA. They sent a flatbed truck that got lost because the AAA call center isn’t local. If you say "I’m in the National Park parking lot, across from the Old North bridge, by the Old Manse", to someone who isn’t local, they get confused. When you tell them 50 Monument street? They tell the dispatcher something else with a 15 in it and certainly not Monument street. My legs got covered with mosquito bites. Dr Jay got 1. Bastard.

Finally, we got the flatbed to where we were, and he asked "Did you check the glove compartment?" Um, no I’ve been sitting out here getting eaten alive, missing the game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals and it never occurred to me to check the glove compartment. OF COURSE we checked. We checked everywhere.  On the way home, the truck stalls, the guy has to pull over because he isn’t sure my car is secured correctly and then tells us about the time he lost a car because he forgot to secure it. OMG.

The next day, I took Dr. Jay’s car to the tire place in town and explained the situation. They asked "Did you check the glove compartment?" UGH! I ended up getting AAA to tow it again to the tire place (it was a back tire and it was BLOWN, not with a low leak). The AAA operator? "Did you look n the glove compartment?" Hello????

The guys did replace the tire and my maintanance plan, which I normally don’t get, did cover half of the tire. All of the locking lug nuts have been removed. However, they called me and suggested that since my battery is 5.5 years old, I should replace it. Um, why? I asked if they checked it out and they did. All was well! Then I was told that BOTH back tires would need to be replaced, but the front ones were newer. I pointed out that THEY had replaced all 4 tires 2 years ago. Amazing that suddenly, only the blown tire was to be replaced.

I do feel that they treat me like this because I am female. That if I were male, they would be a bit more honest. Sigh…