Flat tire? Forget it… I’m just buying a new car.

What happens when you are already as manly as they come and you then have a son?  Well you pass all that manliness right on to your son that’s what.  You teach him to do manly stuff… How to fight off a hungry bear, how to start a fire with sticks… And of course how to change a flat tire.

Well I clearly poses all those abilities (none of them)… A MAN’S MAN as I’m so often (never) called… Ok let’s be real… I’m pretty sure Jax is more manly than I am. I’ve seen him fall and smash his coconut on the corner of the fireplace hearth and get up without so much as a whimper.   I have no problem admitting when a one year old is more of man than I’ll ever be and that’s precisely the case here. Watch me fall and smash my dome and there’s not a chance I’m around to talk about it later.  I’d be dead or in a coma with bloody bandages wrapped around my head like a Revolutionary War soldier. Those are just the facts.

I don’t do well with injuries

But yesterday was a day that will forever be told throughout our family’s history… A day that generations of little Carmine’s will pass on to their sons and their sons’ sons.  A day in which the power of a parent quadruples when their child is in danger.  There are stories of mothers who have picked up a car to save their infant child who was stuck underneath it.  Well, that is exactly the sort of thing that happened to us yesterday.

Driving home the ole Honda blew out a tire.  After pulling off to the side of the road and realizing that there was no way I could drive home on the rim the rest of the five miles, I knew there was only one thing to do. Call someone to pick us up and let AAA change the tire!

But… then I thought to myself, “this is the perfect opportunity to teach Jax something that The Old Man couldn’t teach Ralphie that faithful Christmas Night… How to change a flat tire.” I was pretty pumped to bring him out of the car and sit him down on the curb and give him a run down of the steps needed to change a flat… maybe even give him a stop watch to time it (yes I carry a stop watch around in my car, never know when a hurdle race is going to break out).

However, there was one fatal flaw in the plan… I don’t know how to change a flat tire Jackson was sleeping in his car seat.  So the man-plan simply went out the window… got blown up like the tire I was attempting to change… I guess I’ll have to wait until his mother shows him to change one… until the next flat to have one of those father son moments!

Completely underrated movie scene… SO TRUE… Exactly how I picture Jackson and I changing a tire!

“Only I didn’t say ‘Fudge.’ I said THE word, the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the “F-dash-dash-dash” word!”

PS:  Changed the tire in less than ten minutes, Jax slept the entire time and I only wound up with a few cuts on my hand.