I try to be a nice guy. I really do. I’ve
made enough mistakes in my life that I try to forgive the mistakes of others.
Also, my murky cosmic worldview includes a vague belief in Karma, so I’m nice for
purely selfish reasons; namely, because I want others to be nice to me.
Usually, I manage to at least keep up
the pretense of niceness. But the guy who ran into my car the other day was
lucky to escape with his life.
It was one of those days when everything
goes wrong, y’know? We’ve all had them.
I was supposed to meet my sons for
lunch; nothing fancy, just tacos out of a cardboard box. I was running late
because, while leaving the house, I discovered one of my Beetle’s tires was
soft. One of my Beetle’s new tires,
that I’d just dropped $700 on a week earlier.
Now, ordinarily, there’s nothing I love
more than dealing with a flat when the outside temperature is minus-two. Oh,
sure, there are root canals and reruns of American
Idol, but other than these, sub-zero flats are definitely my favorite thing.
Being the kind of guy I am, I dealt with
the flat by re-inflating the tire and rattling off a quick prayer to Ba’lial,
the imaginary god of punctured rubber. He must have been listening, because so far,
the tire hasn’t gone soft again. We true believers have a distinct advantage
when dealing with this sort of thing.
To show Ba’lial my gratitude, I took
Ruby (my Bug) through the car wash. It’s easier than sacrificing a goat.
I arrived late at Taco Bueno (not the
real name; you know the place I’m talking about). My sons never really expect
me to be on time, so they hadn’t called out the National Guard or pinged my
Life Alert bracelet.
Over a gigantic box of food that only
cost five bucks, my eldest son informed me he was moving to Detroit. I wasn’t
happy about this, since it means I’ll be seeing less of him.
That wasn’t the end of the bad news,
though. My youngest son told me his schedule – he’s a semi driver – was going
to be super busy for the next couple months, so I’d also see less of him.
I don’t have enough friends that I can
afford to lose the two guys I love best. I tried to mask my disappointment, but
I didn’t try too hard. I was raised Catholic, and if Catholic guilt was good
enough for me, it’s good enough for my kids. I wanted them to feel a bad about deserting me.
It may have worked a on Jordan, but
James knows no shame and obviously feels that making a living and providing for
his children is more important than eating tacos with the old man. Kids. What
are ya gonna do?
At any rate, we ate and left. I was
feeling grumpy. But I lied and told both boys I was happy with their decisions
to a) move to Detroit, and b) spend the next three months on the road. They
drove off in Jim Bob’s pickup, the one with the balloon tires; the one that looks
like it should be jumping through hoops of fire at the DeltaPlex.
I would have driven off as well, but
Ruby’s doors were frozen shut. (Here’s a helpful automotive hint: don’t go
through the car wash when it’s minus-two outside.)
Now, I was wearing only slacks, a
T-shirt and a sports jacket. Because I’d rather look cool than be warm. Five
minutes of trying to de-ice the seal around Ruby’s door with nothing but a credit
card put me firmly into the early stages of hypothermia, but eventually the frost
relented and I was able to get in and out of the wind.
And that’s
when the guy backed into me. To be fair, he was barely moving. I saw him coming
and laid on my horn, but he didn’t realize all the tooting and wild
gesticulating was for his benefit.
We
both exited our vehicles. He was an old guy, by which I mean at least ten years
older than me. But probably not 12. His first words were, “Are you all right?”
It’s hard for me to be mad at someone
who’s worried about my well-being, but I tried anyway. “How it’s supposed to work, pal, is that you look, and then you back up!” I said. Considering how angry I was, I thought this
was a fairly measured response.
But being Catholic, I immediately felt
guilty for being a jerk. It got easier from there. The guy apologized, I apologized
for yelling at him, we surveyed the damage, figured out there was none, shook
hands, and went our separate ways.
I’m sure I racked up at least a little
bad Karma though, because of the yelling thing. It’ll come back to me, I just
know it. Ba’lial or no Ba’lial, I expect that tire will start going soft again
any day now.
MTRealityCheck@Blogspot.com
(616) 745-9530
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