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The Boy Who Wanted to Watch wasn’t causing trouble. He just wanted to see everything. The lifts going up. The air guns spinning lug nuts off like they weighed nothing. The machines that balanced the tires. So many question but sadly, Jacob hadn’t figured out how to ask yet but desperately wanted to know. He was seven years old and the whole place was a laboratory and nobody had told him yet that he was supposed to sit still and look at a screen.
I was only supposed to be there five minutes. Tire pressure check on my way through Kingman. In and out. Back on the road. That was the plan until I walked into the waiting area and saw a young woman trying to hold herself together while simultaneously trying to keep a very curious seven year old from pressing his nose against every window in the place.
I sat down two chairs over. Jacob looked at me the way seven year olds look at strangers who don’t seem threatening. Sizing me up. Deciding. Then he pointed at the lift going up in the bay and asked me if I knew what that was called.
That was the beginning of an hour I never planned and wouldn’t trade.
The Boy Who Wanted to Watch and the Mama Who Needed a Minute
Her name was Terry. Friends called her Tinker, she said, and there was a story behind that she never quite got to and I didn’t push. She had the look of someone running on the last of something. Not dramatic exhaustion. The quiet kind. The kind that comes from holding too many things at once for too long without setting any of them down.
They had blown a tire just outside of Kingman on I-40. The kind of blowout that doesn’t give you a choice about where you’re stopping. She had handled it. Called for a tow, kept Jacob calm, got them both safely to Discount Tire. But the handling of it had cost her something and now she was sitting in a plastic chair in a waiting room in a city she didn’t know hoping the bill wasn’t going to be what she was afraid it was going to be.
She was a waitress. A part time dental hygiene student. A single mom on her way to New Mexico to bury someone she loved. Her boss hadn’t been happy about her leaving. Her school didn’t pause because she needed it to. And now this.
I told her she was at a good shop. That Discount Tire had a reputation worth trusting and that they weren’t going to take advantage of her. I watched something in her shoulders drop about half an inch when I said it. Sometimes that’s all it takes. One person who knows something you don’t, saying the thing you needed to hear out loud.
The Boy Who Wanted to Watch Was a Sponge With Shoes On
Jacob had moved on from the lift. Now he wanted to know about the balancing machine. Why did the tire shake like that before. What was the little weight they stuck on the rim. How did the machine know where to put it.
I answered every question as straight as I could. No talking down. No simplifying past the point of honesty. He wasn’t looking for a children’s version of the answer. He was looking for the real one and he would have known the difference.
He asked me how tires got flat. I told him about the valve stem and the tread and what happens when a road puts something sharp in the wrong place at the wrong time. He nodded seriously and filed it away the way kids do when they’re actually listening. Then he asked me why the guys in the bay wore gloves.
We talked about that too.
Terry watched us from her chair. The tight look around her eyes had loosened. Jacob occupied and learning was a gift she hadn’t expected from a stranger in a waiting room in Kingman. She asked me what I did. I told her about the chaplain work, the podcast, the road. She smiled the tired smile of someone who appreciates a good story even when they don’t have the energy to fully enjoy it.
She told me about the dental hygiene program. How she had picked it because it was something real. Something that would get her and Jacob somewhere solid. Her boss at the restaurant gave her grief every time her schedule needed adjusting for class. She was tired of apologizing for trying to build something better.
I told her that was one of the bravest things a person could do. Not the dramatic kind of brave. The everyday kind. The kind that shows up to class after a double shift and keeps going anyway.
What Jacob and Terry Left Behind in Kingman
The tech came in the lobby with the bill. It was fair. She exhaled in a way that said more than words would have. Jacob immediately asked the tech if he could see the old tire. The tech looked at Terry. Terry looked at me. I shrugged and smiled. The tech took Jacob back to the bay to show him the blown tire up close and explain what had happened to it.
Jacob came back with the kind of expression that only belongs to seven year olds who have just been shown something real by someone who treated them like they were worth the explanation.
Terry gathered their things. Thanked me in the genuine way people thank you when they mean it past politeness. She said she felt better than she had all day. I told her the road to New Mexico was going to be fine. That she had already handled the hard part. That the family waiting for her needed exactly what she had, which was the kind of quiet strength that doesn’t announce itself but holds everything together anyway.
Jacob shook my hand. Actually shook it. Like a man.
I sat back down and waited for my car. My five minute stop had turned into an hour and I wasn’t even a little sorry about it.
✨ Roadside Reflection:
The Boy Who Wanted to Watch didn’t need to be managed or quieted or distracted with a screen. He needed someone to take his questions seriously and answer them straight. Terry didn’t need to be fixed or rescued or given advice she didn’t ask for. She needed someone to tell her she was in a good place and that she was going to be okay. Neither of those things took a lot.
They just took showing up and paying attention and being willing to stay a little longer than planned. You never know when a five minute stop is actually an hour that matters. Leave room for those. The road, and maybe even God puts them in your path on purpose. Don’t be in such a hurry that you miss them.
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Faith and Good Courage is a podcast and journal by Christopher Tuttle.