Fixing a Hole

Calling my middle school to talk over tomorrow's lessons, I'm told by the English teacher that our vice principal wants to speak to me. Ho now. He picks up the line and says, "Joshu sensei, I have something to ask you." N'kay.
"The other day," he says, "we got a visitor at this school. A woman. Looking for a certain foreigner who she said lives in Tamagawa." This is when the sirens should start going off in my head. Let's review: there's a woman in town who's looking for me, and who has figured out where I work and WENT there, to a school full of children, looking for me. What woman? What did I do this time?

The thing is, I've got no warning sirens blaring: I haven't done anything incriminating in ages! The worst scandal I've got going for me right now is just delaying the break-up with my girlfriend so I can use her house this weekend when I need to stay in Matsuyama on Friday night (which looks much worse in print than it sounds in my head, but probably is in truth at least as bad as it looks). But she's certainly not coming around my schools! Who's calling for me? And again, What did I do this time?

My vice principal continues, "she says she's looking for a foreigner on a bicycle"--this matches me so far--"who helped her husband out a few weeks ago somewhere in Tamagawa." Ahhhh, Okay! Yes, I tell him, you got me. A few weeks ago I was heading home in a hurry to get to aikido, but it was a beautiful day so I went the slightly scenic way. I don't normally go this way because it's longer and because it brings me past Yuu-chan's house, the ex's house, where it appears I do for some reason enjoy going every once in a while to inflict a mild torture upon myself, like when you poke your palm with a thumbtack. So I zoom around the corner and find, to my great surprise, a car stopped outside the house, in Yuu-chan's spot! I slow down to check it out and discover not the girl I had thought might be there (and was thrilled, in all honesty, not to find), but an old man bent over a tire iron, jack, donut and a flat, flat tire. So of course I dismount and relieve him, jack up the car, free the flat, put on the donut, tighten up the lugnuts (I've learned my lesson on that one, but good...right Matty?), and send him on his way. He wasn't very chatty, our fellow, from an entirely forgivable combination of being old, extremely cold, tired, stressed, scared from being unable to crank the jack by himself, and having been out there for goodness knows how long trying. So that was all fine; I sent him on his way and was only a little late for aikido, and then mostly forgot about it. But apparently he told his wife and they've been on the prowl for me to thank me for it, and now I'm going to get written up in the school newspaper for it, which will be great...now I can learn the words in Japanese and I'll be able to tell people myself if it ever comes up , how to fix a flat in Japan.