Episode summary
A cross-country road trip, a car that quits at 80 miles per hour, and four hours stranded on the shoulder with a baby in the back seat. Tayvin on two phrases that turn a bad day around: what it means when things break down, and how choosing where to look changes everything.
T.E.A. Time is hosted by English teacher Tayvin Bayless. Read the full transcript.
Hello, hello, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless. If you are joining me for the very first time, I am so glad you are here, and I hope you decide to stick around. And to my returning listeners, it is wonderful to have you back with me again. I hope this week has been good to you.
When was the last time something you count on, something you trust without even thinking about it, simply stopped working?
Today’s story starts on a highway, in the middle of a very long road trip. But before we get there, I want to share the phrase we will be carrying through the whole episode. The phrase is: break down. Break down.
I love this one, because it is really several phrases wearing the same coat. Let me show you what I mean.
The first meaning is the one from today’s story. When a machine or a vehicle breaks down, it stops working. It fails. Your car breaks down. Your washing machine breaks down. This meaning has been with us since the 1830s, back when engines were becoming a part of ordinary life. But English took those same two words in other directions. To break something down can also mean to separate a big, complicated idea into smaller parts so you can understand it. A teacher breaks down a hard concept. That is actually what I am doing right now, breaking down this phrase for you.
There is an emotional meaning too. When a person is overwhelmed and loses control of their feelings, we say they break down. You might break down in tears at a wedding, or after a long and difficult week.
And there is one more. In science, when organic material like food or fallen leaves is separated into its basic parts and decays, we say it breaks down. The apple core in your compost slowly breaks down into soil.
One phrase. Four very different lives. A machine failing, an idea being explained, a person crying, and material returning to the earth.
Keep that phrase in mind. We may get some mileage out of one or two of its meanings before we’re done.
This week, my wife and I hit the road again, this time to Idaho. Idaho is famous for growing potatoes, for producing an incredible variety of precious gemstones, and for having some of the best outdoor recreation in the country. It’s also, as it happens, where we have now had not one, but two cars break down.
The first time was two years ago. My wife was working a show for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, and we’d driven up from Texas in our 2013 Nissan Altima. I’d had that car for about four and a half years and had racked up around 220,000 miles on it. As we were driving around town, the check engine light came on, telling us something wasn’t working properly under the hood. The car started having trouble accelerating, and the engine began to shake. Our registration had expired the month before, and we’d planned to renew it while we were in Utah. But because of that check engine light and a few other issues, we weren’t able to register the car. We needed to find another one to buy. Luckily, the problems weren’t bad enough to strand us, so we limped back down to Utah, where our families are. We borrowed a car from my grandparents while we searched, and eventually found and bought our Nissan Rogue for about $5,000.
Which brings us to this week. We’re up here for a family reunion on my wife’s side. It’s about a 1,550-mile, or 2,500-kilometer, drive from where we live in Texas. We’ll be in Idaho for the week, and then in Utah for almost a month so we can attend my brother-in-law’s wedding. It’s shaping up to be a wonderful trip, full of time with friends and family. We’ve been looking forward to this reunion for months. Emma and I are living quite a distance from where most of her family lives, so we’ve not been able to attend the last few reunions. Eliana is going to meet some of her little cousins for the very first time. It’s an exciting time, with a really unfortunate beginning.
On the third day of the drive, about two hours away from my sister-in-law’s house, where we’d be staying, our car broke down on the highway, completely out of the blue. We were going 80 miles per hour when the accelerator suddenly stopped sending power to the wheels. There’s a specific, sinking feeling that comes with that. Your foot presses down, the engine makes noise, and yet the car just slows, like it has decided to give up. I managed to guide us safely onto the shoulder. I turned the car off, let it sit for a moment, and turned it back on. The engine started without any trouble. I even got power back to the wheels. For a few glorious seconds, I let myself believe we’d gotten lucky, that maybe it had been a fluke, that maybe we’d limp the rest of the way. But the little spark of hope in my chest was quickly doused when, two miles later, the power cut out again. This time for good.
So there we were, stranded in the middle of nowhere with a one-year-old baby in the back seat. What were we supposed to do?
Luckily, two things were working in our favor. We had a brand-new, well-functioning AC keeping us cool, and we had an AAA membership. AAA stands for the American Automobile Association, and they provide a whole range of support services for drivers in America. The one that mattered for us was free towing. I haven’t had to use their services often, but when you need them, you really need them. We really needed them.
After a bit of searching, my wife found our membership card, and we made the call. The agent reached a tow truck right away, but it still took four hours for one to actually arrive. Apparently, there was a problem with the first tow truck they contacted, so they had to track down someone else to come get us and the car.
So we waited. And four hours on the side of a highway with a baby is a strange kind of long. We let Eliana climb up and down and all around the interior of the car. We ate the snacks we’d packed for the drive. We watched semi trucks roar past, sometimes close enough to rock the car each time they did. It could have been miserable, and parts of it certainly were. But sitting there in the cool air, with my wife joking about our spectacular luck and my daughter babbling away, I remember thinking, as far as breakdowns go, this is not the worst way to be stuck. A two-hour drive in the tow truck, a conversation with the mechanic, and one more short twenty-minute ride in a minivan, and we finally made it to my sister-in-law’s house. By the time we walked through her door, we were worn out, and our carefully planned travel day was in pieces. But we were there. Safe, together, and off the highway.
Our car broke down. But we didn’t.
Now I want to shift gears and look at a completely different phrase: look on the bright side. Look on the bright side.
Picture any object sitting in the sun. It has a bright side, the part facing the light, and a dark side, the part in shadow. Every hard situation is a little like that. There is a side full of everything that went wrong, and there is a side, however small, with something good still in it. To look on the bright side means to choose to turn your attention toward the side that’s sitting in the light.
Notice that word: choose. Looking on the bright side does not mean pretending the bad thing didn’t happen. My car really did break down. That was real, and it was frustrating. Looking on the bright side just means deciding where to point your eyes.
That is exactly what I did on the side of that highway. Our car had met its end, and that part I could not change. But I could choose what to look at. My family was safe. We’ve saved carefully and stuck to a budget for years, which means we can buy another car without going into debt. And that very afternoon, while the mechanic confirmed what I already suspected about the Rogue, I drove my sister-in-law’s car to a dealership, where I got to test drive one of the most comfortable cars I’ve ever sat in. Smooth ride, remarkable leg room, and a panoramic sunroof. It’s affordable, too, so we may just end up buying it. The dark side was real. I simply chose not to stare at it.
So here’s something to keep in mind in your own life. The next time something breaks down on you, big or small, see if you can take even a peek at the bright side. Try to name one thing you can appreciate in that moment. Not to erase the hard part. Just to make sure it isn’t the only thing you see.
Our trip hasn’t gone according to plan. If the choice were mine, I’d have driven that car another hundred thousand miles, easy. But that choice wasn’t mine to make. The only choice left to me was where to look.
And that’s the strange gift hidden inside a bad day. Looking on the bright side doesn’t change the reality that frustrating things happen. It doesn’t fix the car. What it changes is what fills your view, where you spend your mental energy, and, in the end, how satisfied you feel with the life you’re living. The car broke down. I didn’t have to.
And with that, my cup is empty. Thanks for joining me for T.E.A. Time. Until the next pot.
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