Luck For Chuckleheads

Some days, I swear I shouldn't be allowed out without supervision. Yesterday, I was feeling very put together. It was my turn to take the girls to school, so I got up, got showered (!) and dressed and packed and got everybody out the door and to school by 8 a.m.

This is not a small deal, for me. Left to my own body clock, I rarely see 8 a.m. If I do, and have to be somewhere, I am usually no more than beta dressed. Like a beta test version of software, I am demo only. Usually at least half of what I am wearing is thrown on over my pyjamas, my hair is only passably organized, and my plan is to finish whatever I'm forced to do, and go home and back to bed. So, to be showered before 7 o'clock? BFD!

Kids safely delivered to school, my next task is to convert my single $10 into four $1, so I can pay the fee to park in the lot by my studio. Among other mini-errands, I stop at the SA and buy a drink. Four singles safely in hand, I go out to my car to find. . .

. . .my keys safely locked inside, lying on the passenger seat. No windows are open. No door has a sticky lock that fortuitously stayed open for me. Nope. All locked up tight.

This is where my day would have spiraled completely out of my grasp, not so long ago. Depression would have convinced me that I had no business impersonating a functioning human being, and I might as well just end everybody's misery, including my own. BUT NOT TODAY, DEMON DEPRESSION! FOR I HAVE VANQUISHED YOU!

Sure--a boneheaded move first thing in the morning can really mess one up. BUT! just look at how everything else worked right!

• I was NOT parked at a pump for gas! Thus, while inconvenient for me, I was not causing snarl ups of other cars trying to nose their ways to the trough!
• Why look, over there! Within sight, and only half a block away--there is a locksmith!
• Even better--a locksmith that opened the store at 8 a.m.! Not 9, not 10--I was not forced to seek nearby shelter for a couple of hours, but could walk right in and ask for help!
• And the locksmith himself was in! He was not out on a call, or on vacation leaving the shop full of truly impressive looking safes in charge of the desk clerk!
• He said he'd meet me at my car, so when I walked back to the SA, there was the locksmith's company van!
• But it wasn't MY locksmith--it was another employee who had stopped at the SA to get himself a drink or something!
• I cleverly asked, as he passed by "Are you here to let me in?" And he said, "Um, no, but I can help you." And he did!

So, right there, can you see how suddenly my luck turned? It was a day where my knuckleheaded move was not an omen of worse to come. Instead it was away to get the worst of the day over first. The rest of the day was bound to be uphill from there.

And it was.