Double Ten

On October 10, 2001, I was driving home on highway 13. I was almost at my exit so I stayed in the right lane. A white van was merging on the right, and I slowed down a little to give the driver space to speed up and merge over at the end of the solid white line. The van merged into my lane across the solid white lane, and I simultaneously turned the wheel, hit the brakes, and hit the horn.


Before I knew it (literally!) my car was against the center wall separating northbound traffic from southbound. My first reaction was to get out of the car, but as soon as I unbuckled my seatbelt I realized that I was on a part of the highway that doesn't have a shoulder on the left. I put the seatbelt back on and eventually got over to the right shoulder.


I got out and tried to wave down some help. Wouldn't you know it but my cell phone was dead and the batteries in my car flashlight were dying. Half a dozen cars went past, and finally one pulled over. I asked him to give me a ride to my house, since I couldn't call anyone and the only number I could remember in the moment was my mom's and she was out of town.


The guy who gave me a ride home lived on a cul de sac called Virgo Street a couple blocks from my house, so at least I didn't have to give him directions. When I got home I called Triple A and then I called Zirpu, who agreed to come up and hang out with me overnight. The tow truck driver arrived shortly after Zirpu, and the three of us went back down to the highway to get the car. In the seemingly short time since I'd left it, CHP had stickered the window with their cryptic code.


While I was signing the paperwork for the tow truck, I complained that Double Ten is supposed to be an auspicious and lucky day. The driver remarked, slowly, "Maybe it was."

Advice From Zirpu

Zirpu is very annoyed about something right now. Since that's not an unusual state for him to be in, I won't bother telling you what he's annoyed about.


He just said that he was told once, "When someone is really annoying you, pretend they are really enlightened and they are trying to teach you a lesson."

Dreaming

I stopped by Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper and have been not-tagged. She's posted a fairly serious (for her) story about a conversation she had with a client over the phone. She won't tag anyone, but she says:

". . . I'll ask that you do one thing: continue this on your blog or in an email to your friends or on the back of your car with shoe polish, if you have to. Simply begin with those words and let your heart take over.

Renew the dream."

I have a dream that couples of the same sex will be recognized for the quality of their love, not their gender. That when a woman says "I'm her wife" she won't be denied a hospital visit; that when two men want to be fathers they will be allowed to adopt; that when a child talks about his Mom and Mama no one will make fun of him for "having no dad." That when a woman brings her girlfriend home to meet the parents, and then brings the boyfriend, the parents won't "ask" her to only date men because her life will be "so much easier."


I have a dream that someday, people will be judged not by the expression of their love but by the content of their love.

If your heart is in your dream/ No request is too extreme

I believe this fervently:

If you don't tell people your dreams they can't help you make them come true.


I think perhaps I learned this from my brother. When you're self employed you have to talk to everyone about your business. It's called networking, and No does this for his business daily and I have also talked about his business with acquaintances to help with making connections.

This feeling I have about dreams is bigger than "networking," it's about friendship and kindness and love and about being human. I have not often been in the position of helping people make their dreams come true (well, outside of a financial aid office, anyway). The most amazing thing about doing it though is that it never seems to me like that much of an effort and it makes someone else feel so good.

Saying "I'm Sorry"

Tuesday morning I was leaving the gym, backing the car out between two much larger vehicles. The parking lot is not small but besides the gym there's a credit union, a grocery store, a drug store, a Starbucks, a couple of restaurants, and a recycling center. It's a pretty busy place and I always back out very slowly - especially if I can't see in either direction.


As I swung the car around, I saw the flash of a t-shirt. I never did see the person attached to it until he started yelling, "&^%$$! Look where you're going! $@%#&!" I rolled down the window and turned off Renee Montaigne and Steve Inskeep. I stuck my head out and said, "I'm sorry, I didn't see you," and started to roll away. The slender man in a cap who'd had to jump out of the way of my car cried, "What did you say?!" so I replied, "I said, 'I'm sorry, I didn't see you.'"


He looked embarrassed immediately. He stuck his hands in his pockets and said, "Oh, uh, I'm sorry, too, uh, for my, uh, rude mouth."


I waved and went on my way.

Jumper Cables and the Social Contract

I now have jumper cables in the trunk, due, as I said, to the best husband in the whole world.


Unlike most other tools one may carry in one's trunk, jumper cables involve me in the social contract to help others when their cars aren't starting. Let's see, what I have in my trunk right now other than the new cables are a gallon of water, a sweater, pair of boots, old blue jeans, and a coffee urn. I suppose I also have a car jack because I have the little "donut" tire packed in underneath the trunk floor. Other than the jack, which I hope I never see, none of those things would be particularly helpful on the road, though I have worn the sweater myself.



Jumping a car is always something someone else does for you. If your car battery weren't dead you wouldn't need it to be charged - and that always takes another car battery (or a charger, which the Chevron on Webster keeps on hand precisely because so many people, like myself, forget to turn the headlights off after they come out of the tunnel). It's also always appreciated, as nine times out of ten someone discovers his or her car won't start precisely when it's time to go somewhere. Also, most of the time, it's not something you do for the person who did it for you, which makes a social, not a personal, contract. It's between me and whoever needs my jumper cables in the future.


Next time someone asks me if I can jump their car I will be able to say yes, even if they don't have jumper cables, thereby paying back the lady in the SUV by doing for someone else what she did for me.


I'll just give whoever it is the cables and allow him or her to attach them to the poles on the batteries.

I Could Go Either Way On This

I could write a post about The Usefulness of Men, starting with the discussion a gym friend and I had about moving and ending with pushing pickups, or I could write a post on the Kindness Of Strangers, starting with a dead car battery and ending with a car that's blocked in.


I know which way Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper would go, and I know which way Gluten-Free Girl would go.


So lately I've been having trouble with leaving the headlights on when I go to work. This happens because the tunnel to Alameda is very dark and per the big warning sign, I turn on the headlights when entering the tube. There is no reminder to turn them off and apparently my car doesn't have a "you left the lights on" alarm and I have now three times come to my car after work and it's dead.


Zirpu bought jumper cables last weekend. He is my favorite husband!


The first thing I noticed about my car was a landscaper's truck parked alongside my vehicle, blocking it in. I am a pretty good judge of distance and I thought I could probably get the car angled correctly to back out of the space, but it would be a hassle. The truck had been there over an hour, parked in the street outside the apartment complex, and I figured the landscapers were inside the courtyard working.


As I approached the car I realized it would need a jump, but I figured that was all right, I was about to find the landscapers who would not only move their truck but jump the battery for me. I had the equipment, after all. I entered the complex and there was no one around. I even walked along the halls, figuring maybe a door would be open and I could ask for the guys who owned the truck. If I were parked that illegally, and blocking a private car and a limousine, I would be keeping tabs on my vehicle, especially in Alameda.


As I went back out to the car a woman in an SUV was dropping a friend off and she agreed to jump my car for me. The only problem was that neither of us had actually done it before, but I had the box with instructions and was fighting the "oh my god, what if I blow up?" feeling that was rising in my belly. I've certainly observed many men use jumper cables, on my cars and on others' cars, but I've never done it myself.


A guy came out of the complex and as I was about to ask him if he knew anything about the landscapers he offered to help us jump the car. Not about to refuse, I said sure, and he set up the cables and the car started. I thanked him and the lady with the truck with Namaste hands and they took off. As I prepared to try to get out of the parking space, I left a note on the pickup saying that this truck had been there for an hour and next time I'm calling the cops. I didn't call the cops today because I figured it would take them a long time to arrive, and hit these obviously self-employed landscapers with a huge ticket, if not a car tow-and-storage fee.


I then proceeded the careful maneuvering to get the car out of the space. You know how sometimes you park right next to the curb, but it's okay because you know you'll have plenty of room to pull forward or back to get out? I had one of those mornings today. The problem was that I didn't have enough room to turn the wheels enough to get the car re-angled, I could only pull away from the curb and back at the same angle. Once I got the right angle I would only have the tricky rolling-backwards-while-turning-the-wheel-and-not-scraping-the-
car-behind-mine move, but I thought I could do that.


While I was doing this two guys on motorcycles pulled up and parked across the street. Great, I thought, I have an audience and I'm reinforcing the stereotype that women can't park. That's not what they experienced though, as one of the guys came over and remarked that he thought they could probably move the truck because he'd noticed it was a standard shift. And they did, rolling the truck forward five feet so I could do a U-turn and get out.


I felt like an idiot but these two big inconveniences allowed me to be the recipient of kindness from strangers.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

A Story In Several Parts.

About ten years ago, I was driving east on highway 26 through Portland at about 830 on a weeknight, when my car broke down. That is to say, the engine stopped running, though due to inertia I had enough power to get the car over three lanes and onto the shoulder. This had happened before (for a different reason) so I knew what to do, and I was lucky because there was no traffic to navigate thorough in the car's powerless state.


I got the car onto the shoulder a few hundred feet or so from an entrance onto the highway. This was in the days before cell phones, so I walked up the exit to call AAA, an organization with which I have had a long and useful relationship, for a tow. The entrance came out in a residential neighborhood bereft of pay phones, so I walked a bit, looking for a house with the lights on. I found one in which not only the lights were on but I could see people sitting around a table in the front parlor, so I rang the bell.


I explained my situation and asked if I could use the phone to call a tow truck, and the person who answered the door not only agreed but insisted that I wait at her house for the tow truck to come, rather than on the highway shoulder. I sat on the stairs in the hallway and made my call to AAA, and then waited for the yellow truck to arrive to take me back to the car and ultimately to the auto shop.


I didn't speak to any of the people in the house, except to say thank you and goodbye. They were playing a dice game like Yahtzee or Boggle. At the time I felt strongly that they were so kind to me because the kindnesses I was doing in my life were coming back around to me. I hadn't had to walk far to find a household that would allow me to use their phone, and I had been asked to wait inside, where it was warm and safe, until the tow truck came. I was very aware that I had received kindness from strangers, and felt enfolded in the arms of the universe.

True Christian

Unfortunately due to my early exposure to a Catholic school, and to my later exposure to Christians who wanted to take over the government and destroy the state constitution (not to mention the federal one), I have a poor attitude about Christians. I've known a lot of people who went to church but didn't live what I think of Christian values (and not just Christian). One exception to that was Denver D's father, who in his mid-70s was running a meal program "for old people," was working for Meals on Wheels, and baking many dozens of cookies for prisoners in Canyon City.


Thus, Denver D's dad became my gold standard for a good Christian, a standard to which I don't hold non-Christians.


I met a good Christian today. He works for the postal service, and is about my age. He noticed on his drive to work a homeless encampment under a highway, consistently numbering about a dozen people. As the season was turning from summer to fall, he started a blanket collection among his coworkers for the homeless. He was in the process of trying to figure out which agency would want the blankets and then one night he couldn't sleep. He got up and took the blankets to the encampment.


Now, it's moments like these that I think ignorance is bliss because if his man had had much interaction with the homeless he might have been reluctant to go their campsite in the middle of the night. Of course he was warmly received, and for the last nine months he and a dozen or so USPS friends have been delivering food to the encampment twice a week. Out of their own pockets, they have been purchasing little- or no-prep-required food and delivering it to the folks at the camp. He said they deliver the food, talk with the campers, pray with them, and that they've become friendly with the people at the camp.


From some of the of things he said I gathered that he is serving these folks because his faith tells him to do so, the way Denver D's father's faith told him to serve the elderly, the shut-ins, and the prisoners.


It's possible that this man I met today "hates the sin" and wants a government that is run on some kind of fundamentalist Christian agenda. But I don't know that about him. I know that he is feeding the hungry and warming the chilled. It happens that his faith gives him the reason. I don't think that's a bad thing.


"I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me."


Those are pretty good words to live by, regardless of their source, I think.