It’s hard to be nice when, by nature, I’m a jerk

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.

MTaylor325@gmail.com

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Best to get the disasters out of the way before the trip

By the time this column comes out in the papers, Geezer-thon 2010 will be under way. That’s the name I’ve given the bicycle ride I’m planning from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan, and possibly back again, assuming I don’t keel over somewhere along the way.

I’ve received a lot of mail about my upcoming tour, much of it from readers worried after my safety. Considering my penchant for encountering small-to-medium sized disasters, their concern is not, I think, entirely misplaced.

Not to worry, though, I’ve already gotten my disaster de jour out of the way. I’m working here under the assumption that fate spreads disaster around evenly, and that—having experienced one so recently—it’ll be a few weeks before the next arrives. Time enough for me to finish my ride.

It happened last week.

I was riding along 14 Mile Road enjoying the sun on my back, the wind in my hair, and the heady aroma of auto exhaust that permeates every aspect of life here in beautiful Detroit.

The wind was in my hair because I wasn’t wearing a helmet.

Now, there are folks out there with whom I’ve had long helmet issue debates; I generally come down on the side of “let the rider decide” and I’m sticking with that here. But I have, in fact, finally purchased one, even though I look like a nerd while wearing it.

I was not wearing it this particular day, in part because I was only riding a mile or two, down to the coffee shop that doubles as my office. Also, I had just taken a shower and my hair was just too damn pretty to hide beneath a helmet.

My laptop case slung over my back, I pedaled along at a good clip as the pavement vanished beneath my tires. I was thinking about the work I had to finish, about how nice the day was, about old girlfriends and amusing things the kids had done when they were little.

What I wasn’t thinking is that a Cadillac Escalade would suddenly materialize in front of me. But there it was.

I reached for my brakes, far too slowly. Plowing directly into the vehicle’s passenger-side door, my bike recoiled from beneath me. I executed a half-somersault and landed—on my un-helmeted head—on the Escalade’s hood. The dent I left there was about the size of a dinner plate, maybe three inches deep.

For a couple moments, that was all I knew. I’ve never been knocked unconscious in my life and now that I have, I’ll say this—it’s an experience you won’t enjoy, believe me. When I came to, I felt light-headed and nauseous.

The Escalade’s driver—a young guy in his thirties—was standing over me muttering, “Ohgodohgodohmygod!” or something to that affect.

It took me a few minutes to convince him I was not dead or even badly injured. Once the dizziness passed, I felt fine, in fact. What I didn’t realize at the time was this: I was in shock.

The driver offered to call an ambulance, offered to buy me dinner, offered me fifty bucks in cash. He was really, really shaken up over the whole thing. He genuinely felt terrible about pulling in front of me.

I declined his offers of recompense and wrote it off as a bygones thing. My bike was a bit battered, but ride-able. His Escalade, on the other hand, would need a good two grand’s worth of body work. (My head, even without a helmet, is apparently quite hard. Hard enough to seriously damage a Cadillac, at least.)

Shaking hands, we parted ways. It wasn’t until I was at the coffee shop that the shock started to wear off. When it did, I realized I hurt everywhere! I could barely move.

But a couple of days of taking it easy and I was good as new, so no harm done. And now that I have my biking disaster out of the way, my ride across the state will be problem free. Right? Right?

You can follow daily updates of Geezer-thon 2010 at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com beginning Sept. 6.