i enjoyed talking to the AAA chick (Heather) (though she was no James, the guy from last time), and to
shmizla while i waited. and then who should pull up alongside me but bigfinedaddy, who'd called on her way home from working late, and had casually asked where i was pulled over so she could pay a surprise visit to the site.it was a lovely night out there.
i was put in mind of my flat on the (Chesapeake) Bay Bridge years ago, driving back to campus from the Annapolis Record Exchange in my '75 Nova ("Butch") with a carfull of fellow record-craving youngsters. we managed to pull off the main span to where there was some shoulder; a state trooper came along before we'd even started to change it, chastising me for letting my tires get so worn (and until this vehicle i'd been good about tires ever since).
and then, as each of the variously-inconvenienced responded to the pending delay in getting back to C-town, i had a little epiphany about behavior and personality, and about how we can make bad things worse for ourselves, and about some (handy examples of) ways i didn't want to do that, when & if i could manage not to. since then a shorthand for that set of thoughts for me has been, in my head, "the flat tire phenomenon."
oh, it's not that easy, by a long shot, is it. alas. it is easier than we make it sometimes. but it ain't easy.
and today pretty much sucked.
