Hey everybody!  I have a spare tire. No, not that kind. Sheesh. Out in the car. There’s a tire spare there! What, you don’t think that warrants an exclamation point, let along a blog post? Well, pull up a chair, get a cup of coffee, or tea, or whatever welcomes you to the day, and hear my tale.

Before we begin, you must either recall or take as new information now that I bought a new (to me) vehicle just a few posts ago, or a couple of weeks ago depending on your time reference preference. Another prefatory comment, the previous vehicle was the first “car” vehicle, as in sedan, I bought in this century, Other recent and many older vehicles (with the exception of the “little car” which is the little red roadster than lives 8 months of the year in the garage and doesn’t count for this discussion) have been trucks or SUVs and have always been called “car” though they weren’t, not even the SUVs which were the old truck based SUVs, not station wagons with big wheels we call SUVs (which probably are actually CUVs if you asked a car person) (that’s “car person” as in aficionado, not one who drives a “car” versus a truck, SUV, CUV, or any other V currently roaming the streets). So then, are we ready? Good! I’ll get my coffee and we’ll begin.

Previously I had no need to go looking for a spare tire. While I was driving the now former car of mine, I never had neither a flat nor the desire to lift the car off the ground. Even the existence of a spare tire was merely a curiosity, a conversation starter in very, very, very, very, very slow cocktail parties, or perhaps a discussion topic with my therapist if I had been going to a therapist and he/she/it was one always questioning one’s existence and thus the spare tire could be a tangible example. Or non-tangible as it turned out.

When I was emptying the trunk of all it’s trunk items I wanted to make certain I had everything and thought I should check under the trunk cover and check to make certain nothing had fallen into the spare tire area. I lifted the carpet, lifted the compartment cover, and found nothing there. Not even a spare tire. Nothing is not true. You see, the spare tire was not missing because somebody had absconded with it. There was in its place a small air pump to be used in the event of a flat tire. (It might also have come in handy when I was blowing up pool toys over the years but not knowing of its existence any more than the non-existence of the tire, that consideration never came up.) After a little head scratching and a silent thank you for not having had to discover that on some dark and stormy night with only three fully inflated tires under the car, I gathered up my boxes of trunk things and brought them indoors awaiting their new residency in the back of the new car which is actually not a car but as previously mentioned they are all called cars.

If I may digress for a moment. If you are wondering if that was a typo, no. I typed and intended to type boxes, the plural. I have since streamlined the car trunk stuff to a amore manageable number of items, not including such things as: two wooden yardsticks, a frying pam, three umbrellas, a license plate frame, a can of wood stain, the pole from a pole lamp, and a dust pan.

(Yeah? Why not?)

So, back to our story. Most people are likely familiar with the space saver, limited use, temporary. “donut” spare tire. That thing has more names than British royalty. They seem to be everywhere but only because about 50% of all the vehicles on the roads have them.  If you consider that none of the buses,  tractor trailers, trailer trailers, full size pick-up trucks, truck based SUVs, motorhomes, and motorcycles and scooters don’t have them, that means a lot of cars and SUVs, CUVs, and other Vs do.

Since the 1980s most cars started carrying space saver spares (the first American vehicle to use a space saver as standard equipment was the 1967 Pontiac Firebird). Probably a big chunk of you reading this weren’t even driving before the 1980s so you might not have even ever seen a full size spare even if you ever even looked for one. I was driving before then, quire a while before then, and even though I rarely ever even looked for them I just made some wild assumption that every car on the road not driven by an “I needed to use my spare but I’m not going to replace it because those things are EX-PEN-SIVE” spare tire user had a spare tire. Even. And that’s how I came to be muttering thanks for not having a need for any kind of spare tire on my previous car when I discovered my previous care did not have any kind of spare tire. (Who gives you just a pump?)

But I am happy to report the new to me new car is fully equipped with not so fully sized space saver, temporary, limited use, “donut,” royal spare tire. I checked.

You may now go about your day. That’s it. We’re done here. That’s the end of the story. There’s nothing else. Good day folks.

(I wonder if I should put the frying pan in the new to me new car. It could come in handy. You never know.)

Now scoot. I have things to do. Bye.