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weights, stretching, laughing a lot and checking my heart rate. No lifetime membership needed. Is happy a heart rate? Pumping irony. I think I finally feel the burn.

June 2011
    S OMEBODY S TOLE M Y D ONUT …
    I feel it’s only fair to let all my readers know exactly how clueless, unbutch, and ignorant I am when it comes to motor vehicles.
    Perhaps it was the poster I once saw on New York’s Christopher Street that said, “If it has tires or balls, you’re going to have trouble with it.”
    Maybe that sentiment steered me away from cars and toward the lavender brick road, who knows. But in any case, this story involves a donut, and not the jelly kind. The donut in question is the kind nestled in the trunk of your car in case of a flat tire. I learned the term some time ago as we suffered a blowout in the boonies of Delaware. Smyrna. Where it happened is not germane to this story but I love the name Smyrna.
    Anyway, I learned of my donut ownership from my spouse who was cursing a blue streak and heading to the trunk for the aforementioned cute-looking little mini-tire for use just as far as the nearest gas station. But I guess that you, unlike me, already knew that.
    So, one morning a couple of weeks ago I came out to the garage…let me rephrase that…I went out to the garage. I didn’t need to come out to the garage. It already knows I’m a lesbian who doesn’t know my carburetor from a frou-frou valve.
    So I went out to the garage and found a flat tire. At this point I will tell you I had a friend with me, whose name I shall not mention lest everybody know that she didn’t fare so well in donut 101 either. You see, I opened the trunk, lifted the protective mat and saw what looked to me like a donut hole without a donut in it.
    â€œMy donut is missing! Somebody stole my donut!” I sputtered, accusing some poor mechanic or desperate donut-lessschnook of pilfering my baby spare. “What do I do, put out an APB on my donut?”
    To her discredit, my pal looked into the trunk and, said, “Oh my gosh,” alluding to the fact that she, too, didn’t see any damn donut.
    By my second, “Somebody stole my donut,” we both started to giggle because that statement sounded so stupid. Little did we know exactly how stupid. Mistake one. I did not call my spouse. I handled the mechanical crisis myself—never a good move. I called roadside assistance which immediately sent a tow truck. They should have just sent me a real lesbian.
    Dumb and dumber show up with their tow truck and when I tell them my donut us missing, they peek in my trunk and verify that fact. I think they just took my word for it so they could wrap this up and go get an actual donut.
    â€œNo problem,” said one of the brain trust mechanics, further validating my conclusion about the errant donut. “Let’s pump up the tire, see if it holds the air, and we will follow you to the tire store.”
    Which is exactly what happened. Whereupon they waved bye-bye, I learned that the tire valve stem thingie, was leaking, I bought a new one for $15—clearly the cheapest repair ever, and went on my merry way. Oh, except for feeling quite violated and telling everybody who would listen that somebody had pilfered my donut.
    Then, like a schmuck, I put the tale on Facebook. Ha-ha funny story, ha-ha somebody stole my donut. By the next day, one of my pals came by with a donut spare she got at a yard sale, another showed up with a rusty but serviceable donut, and a third generous but snarky friend brought me an actual dozen Krispy Kremes.
    Enter my friend, the gayboy car guru. He stops by my house, gets out of his truck, wordlessly goes over to my car, pops the trunk and unscrews the wing nut in the donut hole, opens the plastic cover and reveals, ta-da, my donut.
    Who feels like a wing nut now?
    I had to issue a mass mea culpa for the false accusations of a donut heist. Repercussions