"Fine, fine," I gulped. He was twice as tall and one and a half-times as wide as me - a massive, square bulk of human, dressed in the thick warm fleece and oil-splashed hi-vis livery of every roadside assistant, everywhere. There was no way I could ask him why it takes two hours to attend a flat tyre.
And actually, I wasn't really in the mood for complaining anyway. He'd showed up, and with silent skill, he'd fixed my spare tyre and lumbered my old one awkwardly into the boot - even if he'd done it all without really saying a thing. I'd not been in danger. I'd not been freezing. I'd been alright - if slightly miffed.
"How's your day going?" I'd nervously asked while he pushed the jack underneath. He didn't look up. He just said,
"Better than yours, I reckon," as though he'd said that exact thing in this exact circumstance a thousand times. I laughed - in exactly the way a thousand other people must have done already, and then said,
"Well don't worry about me. I'm okay; these things happen."
And that, until he asked me his regulated question about the service from the dirt-covered iPad, was the sum-total of our conversation, him and me: the giant mechanic and the tiny man who'd punctured his driver-side front tyre.
"'member you can only do fifty on that one," he grizzled.
"Y'okay," I said for some reason. I signed his iPad and then he was gone, his AA transit van flashing around the corner to the next emergency.
I got in my car and went to work. Nobody there would be waiting for me to silently fix their latest documentation emergency. In fact, I wasn't even sure anyone would really be waiting to see me at all. I thought about that a lot.
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