GOOD FRIEND GOOD HEART - BUT YOU WANT TO PULL YOUR HAIR OUT

From November 03, 2007 ON AIR JUDGE WYLD SHOW - Radio Talk

Excerpt from show prep notes. On air content may have been more or less. Not journalistic or debate notes.

FLAT TIRES AND HELPFUL FRIENDS.

This week was tires week for Judge. The day that I was to get new tires on the Jeep I met a bunch of fellas for a chicken fried steak lunch. It’s good to get away and enjoy a man’s meal with a bunch of old guys who have stories and phrases for a young man like me to learn from…

phrase like ‘That ain’t no Hill for a climber.’ Meaning of course, that it might be a challenge for some but to someone who is used to it, the activity won’t be difficult at all… That aint no Hill for a Climber!!! ..

another phrase that I heard again this week over lunch with the old guys was, ‘Aim Low; they are riding Shetlands’. Sheltland ponies are small horses. So if someone is advancing on you on a Shetland pony, attacking from that LOW angle, when you fire on them, aim low. Probably means that someone is willing to use dirty low down tricks on you so you might as well aim low to defend yourself…. ‘ Aim LOW, they are riding Shetlands!’

After that comfortable guy lunch I went out to my vehicle… the around town vehicle… and it had a flat right front tire… rats… right there, easy to see, was the nail… no mystery here.

I am self sufficient mostly but hey, my buddies were inside and so I thought I’d go back into the bar and grill and announce the tire situation…. No problem… don’t bother getting out the extra jack that I carry in all my vehicles and no need to get out the spare….

Milton, a great guy, says we’ll just go back to his shop, get an air bubble and plug kit. Sure. That will be FAST… probably take 20 minutes TOPS… I’ve many times plugged tires on the pickup truck and on the race car trailer… and even on a tire on my riding mower. It takes no time at all…

Milton’s shop. Milton started attending to other things... Phone call. Iraq vet messed up… tear up radiators for scrap. Explain it again. Another phone call. Getting out the welder. Re-explaining to the Vet. Air bubble fill it up. Re-explaining to the vet. Plug kit.

And finally get in the vehicle after 30 minutes. Close… as soon as his butt hit the seat… he got back out of the truck to get a set of dikes…. Wire cutters is what those are… so he went back in the building and came out 10 minutes later with the dikes….

And announced he needed to go put 100 dollars in the bank right away so when his daughter cashes her birthday check that it won’t bounce. So we go to the bank which is in the opposite direction from my vehicle grrrrrrrr get in line in the drive through at the bank behind just one car… that car took 20 minutes at the bank and Milton wouldn’t move over to another lane because he wanted to see the bank teller face to face…

Long story short… after an hour and a half I was back at my vehicle and no lie..no lie… it only took 2 minutes to fix the tire… no lie… Ole Milton then wanted to check the air in the other tires. I said no I have to go… cya….

Mitlon later that day negotiated prices with another shop for tires for my hunting vehicle and I did get those replaced two days later. There always is a moral of the story when you hear Judge Wyld… and this one is no different…

How often do you accept help from a friend that really costs you in the long run. Costs you time, costs you more for something you want to buy, costs you from getting to do something else that made more sense but because your friend was being nice, you didn’t say no and things spun out of control.

To Summarize: I was stranded once. Milton had whisked me away from my vehicle. I had no more control other than to get mad and demand that he quit farting around and get me and that tire kit back to my vehicle… of course I didn’t do that.

Even the tires he found for me were better quality and more price than what I needed BUT that was ok because the place that I let do those tires, is also a place that services our Hospital Vans. Those are the vans that I and other drivers donate our time to drive Shrine kids to the free hospital care in St. Louis. We depend on those vans to get our precious children to the hospital and back. 900 miles round trip, those vans make several trips a week. So we do like to throw business to that shop who take car of our charity vans.

Sometimes you have to tell your friends NO. Sometimes they need to be more considerate of what kind of help they are giving you and you need to let them know it. But other times, you let it ride, literally… I worked late evening to make up for the time away from work.

I enjoyed earlier in the day spending that time with Milton. Letting him help. Letting him inconvenience me more than the flat tire did. I enjoyed driving around with him in the sunshine and moderate weather. And I even enjoyed working late that evening because darn it.. I knew WHY I was working late.

Sincerely, JUDGE WYLD