LAUGH, EVEN WHEN IT HURTS!

 In my profile description on this blog I mentioned that I’ve learned to laugh at myself a lot more as I’ve gotten older.  Those words were put to the test about a week ago and to be honest, it’s a lot funnier now than it was on that Monday.

Here’s where it all started.  I was having a routine day after dropping my grandchildren off at school—errands, reading, writing, laundry—you know, rather mundane stuff.  By mid-afternoon I was about to head out the door and drive to their school to pick them up.  I went to my usual place in the house to retrieve the car keys, but they weren’t there.  I checked my jeans pockets, my fleece jacket, the counters, the porch, the top of the washing machine, and any other obscure place I could think of.  NO KEYS!  And then the dreaded thought—could I have left them in the car ignition?  I was feeling what I might otherwise have thought were menopausal symptoms—serious hot flashes! I was in a mid-afternoon state of panic on a normal weekday.  Except, it wasn’t normal!!!  The keys were definitely in the ignition, turned to the “on” position.  No engine running, but a dead battery nonetheless.  The car wouldn’t even pretend to start. My first thought was to put it in neutral and try to slide far enough down the driveway so I could get the other vehicle—the BEAST-- out of the garage.  There was only one problem with that--the dead battery car had a normal shifting lever that would not budge unless the engine was running. Just this one time, I longed for one of my car relics of the past. These new-fangled vehicles sometimes just did not comply. So then I obviously needed to ‘fess up,’ call my son at work, and admit that I couldn’t resolve this problem on my own.  He listened, offered suggestions, asked questions, and then realized that this needed quick action.  Call the school and get at least one child home on the bus.  I, the normally reliable one, had failed—in my mind, not his.  But leaving the keys in the ignition for six hours?   I’d never done that before.  However, it does bring up another odd thing.  Now and then it’s just my nature to get distracted, but that may have been doubly so because my driver’s door has required some concentration lately to get it open.  For some strange reason, and for a number of days, it had refused to open the normal, customary way.  Each time I wanted to get out of the car and go somewhere, I had to turn the ignition on, push the metal lever that makes the window go down, hit the unlock button, and reach my arm outside the car to grab the handle and unlock the door.  Plenty of thought processes involved, and I kept telling myself that it was good for me at my age.  But on that day I seemed more obsessed with the door than with remembering to take the key out, even though I had been doing that very thing for days.

My next step, as I told my son, was to try to angle the SUV past the big boat in the garage and at least manage to pick up my grandson at school at 6, after my granddaughter arrived home on the bus. I can’t even begin to say how valiantly I tried to get the BEAST out of the garage.  I kept getting out of it every few feet because I was worried about hitting the car behind it. I didn’t have sense enough to realize that I could move a small part of the boat to make more room for the BEAST—maybe just the space I needed. I finally got the vehicle partly out of the garage, only to be confronted with a bush that was not offering to budge.  In the meantime I had knocked over something, but didn’t think that it was a big deal.  Oh, but it was!  However, I’ll offer more about that later. Still continuing on that illogical theme, I thought maybe I could angle the beast through the small garage door on the other side.  I finally decided that I didn’t want to chance taking the top of the vehicle off.  Good choice!  Then I thought of moving the large basketball stand to angle the SUV around on the other side.  Thankfully it didn’t want to cooperate.  My son later told me that it wasn’t meant to be moved and I could really have hurt myself.  At times my stubbornness and determination is incomprehensible, I realize, and agonizing too!  It was time to admit that I couldn’t resolve this alone.  A call to my son was necessary again.  He called his dad to ask if he could pick up our grandson at the community center parking lot, where the bus would now drop him off after chess.  Thankfully, he obliged, but the time told to him by my son was 5, not 6, which was too early.  Enter another family member’s involvement.  My daughter-in-law Z called the community center receptionist to ask if someone could go out to the far end of the parking lot to tell her father-in-law that his grandson would not be there until 6, not 5. My son had tried to call him and tell him the correct time, but the battery went dead on the phone right in the middle of the conversation.  So naturally Z had to get involved; it seemed every family member needed to be involved in my crazy escapade. She explained that her father-in-law was driving a white VW.  The receptionist must have thought she was talking to someone from another planet.  Dead silence at her end for a while, and then an emphatic NO.  The receptionist did not even realize that a school bus was arriving in the lot every day about 6 to drop kids off after school activities.

As you might guess, it all got resolved—eventually. The kids made it home safely, the battery got recharged, and the car functioned again.  Never have I appreciated that simple fact so much.

But one last thing I alluded to—that thing I knocked over while trying to get the SUV out just happened to be something belonging to my son. So when he came home from work, I thanked him for his understanding and patience earlier in the day.  However, I told him I had one more embarrassing admission.  I have something to show you, I said.  Gulp, gulp!  I explained that as I was attempting to back the SUV out, something fell, but I was so nervous and involved in trying to get the big beast out that I only focused on that end of things.  I also didn’t think that anything major had fallen. Boy, was I wrong!  I discovered that it was my son’s nice, somewhat expensive bike, which was parked right inside the garage door.  When I first looked at it, I thought maybe it had been damaged before.  No such luck—I was the culprit!  Amazingly though, when I showed my son his bike and explained how badly I felt, this was his response:

“So, you trashed my bike, Mom, and you had a bad day, but tomorrow will be a better day. No big deal!  Don’t worry about it.” 

I felt a little emotional after all that, but with those kind words, he put everything in perspective.  And guess what?  The next day WAS a much better day, and when coming back home from school with the kids, I checked my e-mails and learned that I had won $100 in a sweepstakes.  I offered to pay my son back for his bike, but he never considered it. 

The next day as we were driving to school I told my grandchildren how understanding and kind their dad had been.  Rather than showing anger or disgust, I said that he had made me feel at ease after a day when I had screwed up royally.  And at long last I could laugh about it and remember that I needed to practice what I sometimes preached—LAUGH AT YOURSELF EVEN WHEN IT HURTS!