Flats and Fraud

The last couple of days have been an adventure. It started with a flat tire and ended in fraud.

Saturday afternoon found my husband and me driving through a rainstorm. It had been raining for about 48 hours, which is weather more akin to a tropical storm in Florida. Most of the time we can just drive in and out of the rain or wait five minutes for a break in the clouds.

Just down the street from our apartment, we started hearing a rhythmic thumping coming from the underside of the car. I always jump to the worst possible scenario, having spent just under 10 years driving a finicky old Dodge.

"Great," I think, "something screwed up my axle."

My husband tends to be the optimist in our relationship and says we probably just drove over something that attached itself to the undercarriage. We were both wrong.

It was pouring when we stopped the car. We ran upstairs with the groceries and figured we'd check when the rain stopped. The possibility of a flat had crossed our mind and we assumed it would be pretty damn obvious in a few hours if that were the case.

The next day, it was still pouring. It dropped to a light drizzle mid-morning and I was entirely too nervous, so we went downstairs to check the car.  He watched as I slowly rolled the car out of the lot and, lo and behold, a HUGE BOLT was stuck in the tire tread. I mean, this thing was thumb-thick. Luckily, there was a washer attached, which had kept the tire from deflating. It was in there good enough that the pressure held.

For some ungodly reason, I forget that spare tires exist. I decide to drive the car to the closest auto shop to get the tire repaired or replaced. My husband follows me in his car so we have transportation if my tire goes flat.

About 1-2 miles from the shop, I suddenly saw my husband's car rapidly shrink away in my rear view mirror. His car decided to die instead of mine. Long story short, the alternator had reached the end of its life. Not 30 seconds later, my tire blows. It was announced by a loud THUD and the clang of a nail flying out of the tread and hitting the wheel well.

I'm close enough to the mechanic that I flop the rest of the way into the lot. So, there we are, my husband stuck on the side of the road and me stuck at the auto shop, neither of us able to reach the other. He was stuck for about an hour until AAA could tow him to the shop where I was. We were stuck there another 2 hours until the tire could be replaced.

The next day we learn that the alternator for his car would cost about $500, which is exactly the blue book value of the car. We junked it.

We went car shopping the next day. My husband needs a car to get to work and we end up looking for a car the worst possible way - in a rush. A used Ford won the day as we sat waiting for financing information. As we're dealing with percentages, I'm told my husband doesn't have the best credit.

"Wait," I say, "we just got a new car a few months ago and we both had stellar credit."

The person helping us proceeds to say my husband has a few late payments on a line of credit with a certain bank. Problem is, we've never used that bank! Ever!

Fraud.

Once we get home, my husband looks into it and learns that someone took out a line of credit in his name when he was fifteen!

The crazy thing is, regardless of how inconvenient and stressful the whole ordeal was, this all happened in the best way possible. It was better for my husband's car to die about a mile from a mechanic rather than on his 45-minute drive down rural roads to work. He pulled over in a safe area, just before reaching a large highway exit ramp that merged onto the road. If we hadn't gone to look for another car we wouldn't have found out about the credit fraud, which could have destroyed us in the long run, as all the horror stories go. If not for my flat tire, we never would have learned of this. It was one of those moments where you have to figure someone was looking out for you.

Basically, thank you for the bolt in my tire, my forgetfulness when it comes to spares and the dead alternator. They could have saved us from a much bigger problem. At first I hoped this stroke of bad luck wasn't karma-related. In hindsight I can see that if it was karma, I must have done some good.