Clancy and I were driving down I-13 in Deseret to go to my cousin’s wedding and she was reacquainted with a driver that seemed to be collecting pet peeve of hers to toss out there and drive her blood pressure up.

The first thing he did was follow way too closely from behind. She kept slowing down so that he would pass, but he didn’t seem to want to do it. Then he finally did, driving right to the point that she was in his blind spot and then swerving back and forth.

We were pretty ruthless with our commentary. At first we thought he was drunk. Then I thought he was trying to read something, then Clancy suggested that it looks like he might be writing something. “Probably doing a crossword puzzle, I murmured as Clancy darted past him.

The next thing we knew the jerk had sped up too so that he could be right beside her. “What an ass!”

Then we saw what he was writing.

“You have a flat tire!!”

We looked at each other. “We do?” We asked. The car seemed to be pretty steady. Flat tires are generally something that you notice. But the car was a rental and we didn’t want to destroy it, so we waited for the next exit to get off on.

When we found it, the driver was getting off, too. This was an exit in the middle of nowhere. We started getting nervous that maybe he was jump us or something and take our car. Maybe he had someone with him laying in the back seat of the car. Heck, he didn’t even need that, really. A gun would have done the trick.

He was pulled over on the side of the road off the exit. Since we didn’t know when the next exit would be, we decided to risk it to check the tire. I got out my cell phone and dialed 911 so that if need-be I could just hit the “send” button in case of an emergency.

When we stopped, he walked over to the car and said “Sorry about that. I was really concerned about your tire. I guess it’s not entirely flat, but it’s pretty close.” I looked down and sure enough, it was pretty low. The guy we’d been cussing out for the previous half-hour was trying to do us a solid.

He said that he thought he’d had a tire pumper, which was why he pulled over, too, but that it must have been in his other car. So worst-case scenario, the guy was going to help us out looking for a tip. Once we were back on the road, we quietly apologized ourselves for all the bad things that we were saying about him.