mamapants

So the Highlander needed some tires. The old ones had seen me through 48,000 miles and a nail pop on Labor Day weekend (one that cost me $100 to get fixed, because hey, it was a holiday and apparently even though the tow/tire place was open and readily available to plug said nail hole, it was still a holiday, and ha ha ha that costs more. Duh!) Rob explored the internet, and we learned the valuable lesson that, like self-diagnosis, one should not tire shop online, because one will inevitably pick the wrong tire and end up with dengue fever instead of a cold.

The Sears guy took one look at the printout I handed him and said, "That one won't work, because you have a limited edition Highlander, which is just code for 'requires extra special parts that are totally going to cost more.'" Maybe not in so many words, but yeah, that's what he said. I laughed bitterly and explained that my husband had printed that out, and he must have just been wrong about the 17" versus 16" size requirements. We got things figured out and I picked a new fancy tire and all was going smoothly, until we got to the pricing.

"Well," sez he, "this one is the right tire for your car, but maybe you want to wait."

"I don't really want to wait, since my old tires are essentially bald and losing about 15 pounds of pressure every ten minutes. I think maybe I'll just go ahead now," I said.

His eyebrows met in the middle. "Yeah, but these tires, they're $20 more each."

My eyebrows met in the middle. "That's okay, really. I knew it would be expensive, and you guys are doing that free installation thing right now, so I would just like to--"

"What I mean," he said, "is that you might want to talk to your husband first and make sure it's okay with him. I mean, that's an extra $80."

[cue scratching record, and of course screeching tires.]

My eyebrows actually crossed and switched places.

Posted in: on 3/10/2008 at at 4:41 PM