The Saddest Day of My Life . . .

. . . okay so I've probably had sadder days than this, but at the moment I felt completely helpless with an overwhelming amount of anguish. I felt as if my child was horribly hurt and all I could do was watch. (I know all of you mothers out there will most assuredly make fun of me for this, but it's honestly how I felt. So, even though my Hank is not a real boy, like your children, he is real to me and there is no other way to describe it.)

I must now explain the whole story in great detail. Lets go back a little:

Christmas, 2005. Hank and I had been a pair for a little over a year now and I wanted to get him something really special. Something both he and I had wanted since the day we met, . . . new tires! There were a few things holding us back. Money, for one, and the desire to have the biggest and baddest, hard core mudders around. So, naturally, we'd need to give Hank a little bit of height before switching the tires.

I'd done my research and found what I believed to be the best looking tires out there. Toyo Open Country M/T's. Now, mudders are quite expensive so it took me a while to save up enough cash to buy them, but I did it. I even found them at a store in Bountiful for a really good price. So I called them up and snatched the last set. The only problem was, I didn't have my lift kit installed yet. Don't worry, the lift was ready to go, we just had to wait until Jarred (the best brother-in-law in the history of brother-in-laws) had a free weekend to help me (yes, when I say help me, I actually mean he would do all the work and I would watch and occasionally hand him tools.) I didn't want you thinking that I go out and buy tires without lift-kits properly installed first, all willy-nilly like.

I explained to the nice man at the tire store that I would like to purchase the tires now but I can't put them on my Jeep for 3 more weeks. Then I asked him if I should come pick them up now and bring them back when I was ready for mounting, or if he could hold them for the 3 weeks until I had the lift on. The man was so nice. He told me he would be happy to hold them for me and to give me a call the day before I was coming so he could pull them out of storage. So nice.

Two weeks passed since that conversation and Jarred and I finished the lift, a week before schedule. I was so excited! I called up the nice man at the store, expecting him to be just as excited, and told him I would be by in the morning to have my tires mounted. Yay!

. . . the phone went silent.

Not dead, as in hung up on, just silent like the person on the other end didn't even want to breathe in the hopes that I would forget about our conversation, hang up, and never call again. But I didn't hang up. Instead, I repeated the last sentence at a slower speed, thinking that maybe, in all my excitement, I spoke too quickly and he didn't have time to absorb everything I just said. It worked. He finally responded.

"Um . . . tomorrow's not gonna work for me. We're . . . um . . . really busy." His voice quivered.

"Oh. Well, that's okay. I can come on Saturday. I know I'll look really silly driving around this huge jeep with these teeny-tiny tires, but that's okay right, it's only a couple of days and it's not as if it's hurting anything, it's not going to hurt anything right?! My jeep will be okay if I keep the little tires on til then, right?!" I said with the same excited tone, which quickly turned into a mild hysteria.

"No, no, you'll be just fine driving on those tires." The man assured me. "But we're, um, busy on, um, Saturday too. Can you give me, um, like a week or so? I can, um, fit you in next Saturday." A weird sort of desperation creeped into his voice as he said this.

"A week?!" I chirped. I was shocked. How could this store be so busy that they couldn't fit me in for a whole week? "I don't really want to wait that long. That's okay, I'll just come in to get my tires and I'll take them somewhere else to get mounted. Thanks, though." I was still pretty cheerful even though now I had to figure out who I could con into letting me borrow their truck because there was no way 4 big 35x12.5 Toyo Open Country M/T tires were going to fit in my little jeep.

The phone went silent again.

"Hello? Are you still there?" I asked.

". . . well, you see . . . um . . . I don't have your tires in the store right now." He whispered. The desperation still in his voice.

"What?!!! Where are they?!!!" I was so worried.

". . . well, you see . . . they were the last set we had."

"And?!!!! "

". . . um . . . well . . . I sold them." His voice trailed off, back into a whisper.

"What?!!! How?!! I don't understand! I already paid for those tires! How can you sell something that's already been purchased?!!!" I was starting to scream then. I could actually feel the blood going to my head and I had to concentrate really hard to just breathe and calm down a little.

"I know, ma'am, I'm sorry. It's just that they were the last set we had in the store. I can get a new set by next Saturday. I'm so sorry." He was extremely apologetic, which actually helped me calm down.

I took a deep breath and said. "That's okay, I can wait a week. As long as you can get them by next Saturday, it should be okay." We ended the conversation with his promise to have the tires no later than Saturday. It really was an honest mistake. He thought he would have one more week to replace the tires. No harm done, right?

Wrong!

About two hours after hanging up with him, he called me. His voice wasn't apologetic this time. He told me that after speaking with the store manager, he found out that the Toyo Open Country M/T's were on back order. He found another store that had a set but they were $200 more than what I had already paid and that if I wanted them I was going to have to pay the difference. I was outraged! I tried to argue with him, telling him it was his fault and that the store should have to pay the difference. In the end, arguing got me no where. I even asked to speak with the manager, who was extremely rude and not the least bit apologetic for the situation. He told me that there was no way he would pay the difference. So, I gave up. I asked for a refund and started looking for new tires at a different store, right then. Then the manager then proceeded to tell me that it would be 3-4 days before he could refund the money. That fired me up again. I just didn't understand how they could immediately withdraw funds from my account using my debit card, but they couldn't possibly refund the money immediately. What was the hold up? If I wasn't getting my Toyo's, I certainly wasn't going to sit around for 3-4 days so I could pay for different tires.

But, of course, I lost that battle. I waited the 3 days that it took for the money to show up in my account and I purchased new tires.

Now, although this story was quite upsetting to me at the time, it turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened. During those 3 waiting-for-my-money days, I found new tires. Better tires! I couldn't believe I had overlooked them during my original search. The moment I saw the Goodyear Wrangler MTR's, I was hooked. Those were my tires! Sure, they were a little more expensive. $200 more than the Toyo's, but for some reason that measly little $200 was not an issue as I willingly forked over the cash for the most perfect tires I had ever seen.

Hank loved them too. It was if they were made for each other.

Hank was lookin' so good. He had a growth spurt and some shiny new digs to complement his new towering physique. Complete bliss. Not even one problem, and that's the way it's been ever since.

. . .

Until a month ago.

To be continued . . .