This morning I got together for breakfast with three of my closest friends that I go back with over 20 years on the terrace of a little cafe in Bratislava.
We hadn’t seen each other in years and we only had about 45 minutes before the workday began.
We had barely begun to catch up when a tiny car bumped up on the curb next to us with a very loud flat (read: destroyed) tire. We looked through the passenger window and saw a disheveled girl in her late twenties lay her head down on the steering wheel defeated. She looked like she already had a rough morning and that this was the final blow.
She didn’t even glance at us even though we were quite literally two feet away from her, and when we approached her, she responded awkwardly with a slight speech impediment that she was just going to call a tow truck and didn’t want to be a bother.
We spent the next few minutes and a big chunk of our little time together getting her set to go.
Turns out she was on the road to an important college exam and as soon as her tire blew she assumed she wouldn’t make it as she had never changed a tire and didn’t even know she had a spare in her trunk. She was in tears, and quite generous with hugs (not a common thing in Central Europe) by the end of our interaction.
The four of us didn’t really have time to catch up that much. But we all decided it was the best way to spend our morning and the best way to reconvene a scattered friendship. We also concluded it was indeed the best place for her to find herself helpless in a city of over half a million people.
Love these guys and am looking forward to seeing our stories intertwined once again.
And I bet she killed her exam. 
-Dawson
DAWSON AND LAUREL JONES 