And then there are some days when you have an arguably "bad" day -- yanked out of a deep sleep at 6:45 by your neighbor calling to tell you that your car just got hit on the street out front, only it's not YOUR car, because yours is at the mechanics and you've borrowed a car from your friend so it's your friend's car that just got hit, and hit BAD, and also you have two garbage cans from down the street in pieces in your yard, and their contents are basically all over, and the wrought iron handrail to your front steps is bent at 45 degrees and jesus fucking christ you were just having the best sleep you'd had in months, and now you have to deal with this...
But the kid who hit you looks like his world has just ended, and he's jittering there in his high school wrestling team letterman jacket, apologizing to you and telling you how he just got off a 14 hour shift at the FedEx distribution center and he fell asleep trying to get home, and you ask him how he is, and he says he's not hurt, but you ask no, how are you really, and he just. he just. He pulls that beanie down over his eyes and starts to cry, and Covid or not, borrowed car in shreds or not, lost sleep or not, you just have to grab his skinny ass and give him a fucking hug.
Because in a few hours you will realize that you own a truck now, and it's an old one, all steel and very high sprung. Built for work, that truck, only it needed work, so it's at a friend's house this morning, but if it had been where it belonged when this kid was trying to get him and his buddy home, that would have been what they hit. And their low slung little Toyota would have submarined right under the truck's high back end, and when your neighbor called you, it would have been to come down and watch them shoveling that kid's body out of the car in pieces.
And that glimpse into the alternate universe will turn that whole bad day onto its ear -- not into a good day, no, but into a shaky, deep breathing day of reverence for the ways things went wrong in exactly the right way for that kid to walk away from this. And a day of shaky gratitude for the fact that the universe zigged instead of zagging this morning. I am so glad it was not worse than it was.
blakekathryn
prguitarman
jacobvanloon
annaxmalina
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
