One Year of Gratitude — Day 21

Joshua Briley
Jul 24, 2017 · 2 min read

Yesterday morning I was outside mowing the grass. I noticed some uneven lines in the yard. Usually my mower cuts nice and even. I wondered if something caused the mowing deck to shift. I stopped the mower and hopped off to take a look. Sure enough, the right side of the deck was sitting higher than the left side. So, I jumped back on in an attempt to drive the mower to the garage. I put it in gear and nothing happened. The mower wasn’t moving. I jumped back off the mower only to notice the left rear tire is loose. It’s separated from the wheel. Well, that can’t be good.

Turns out, my neighbor was watching the whole thing. I suspect he had a chuckle or two. He’s a handy man. Much handier than me. He’s the type that’s always tinkering in the garage. Always tinkering on engines and whatnot. He also happens to run a tire repair business. How convenient is it to live next door to a tire guy when you have a tire problem? He’s got a big’ol fancy truck with all the fixins for tire repair. In a flash, he drove it over to help me out. He popped that tire back on and inflated it. He checked all my other tires and inflated them, too. What would have taken me an hour or two only took him minutes.

He commented how nobody practices proper tire inflation management. He mentioned some things about tires being porous. He taught me a few best practices. I couldn’t help but laugh. Not because of the information he was sharing. For that I was grateful. I was laughing because his issues with tire pressure management sounded an awful lot like my job. Programmers are always fussing about other programmers’ code. You’ll hear us say things like, “why’d he use a for loop? Recursion is the new hotness!” Or, “who uses jQuery anymore? You can get all the same benefits from ES6/7/8!” He was expressing the same level of dissatisfaction with my poor tire pressure practices. I couldn’t help but laugh. We both laughed. I learned something. I’ll never forget it.

So, I’m thankful for my neighbor. I’m thankful he’s smart about tire repair and tire pressure maintenance. I’m thankful he decided helping me was more important than completing what he was doing. I’m thankful my mower is cutting the right way again. I’m thankful I was able to give him a laugh. In the end, I think my lack of tire pressure awareness was a win for both of us.

And that’s your gratitude for today…

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