Friday, December 5, 2008
Page 15
AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)
Singing the Bad Day Blues
By J’AMY PACHECO
You know it’s going to be a bad day when…
•You turn on the news, and they’re showing escape routes out of the city;
•Your income tax check bounces;
•You call suicide prevention, and they put you on hold.
Ever have one of those days?
Maybe I’m just getting old and cranky, or maybe my karma is starting to stink. Either way, it seems like lately “one of those days” is turning into “a lot of those days.”
On a recent morning, for example, I was scheduled to attend a luncheon in Riverside. I allowed plenty of time to get there, and was within a few miles of my destination when the freeway came to a sudden stop. Was it an accident? An object dropped on the freeway? An alien invasion?
Nope. It was a giant merge, as one of the lanes was blocked off to traffic right where two freeways blended. When I finally reached the reason for the blocked lane, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Three construction trucks were parked in the lane.
There was no work being done; not a human being in sight. The lane had apparently been turned into a temporary parking lot.
That snafu resulted in me getting off the freeway mere moments before the event was to begin. When I discovered a significant amount of roadwork being done on the streets surrounding my destination, I took an early turn and grabbed the first street parking spot I could find.
Clutching a few dollar bills, I searched in vain for a machine to take my parking fee. There was not a single machine in sight.
I saw a scruffy looking man ambling down the sidewalk, and desperate, asked him if he knew where I was supposed to pay. He sent me around the corner and halfway down the block. When I keyed in my parking space number, the machine informed me I was in the wrong range.
I crossed two more streets to another machine, only to be outmaneuvered by what had to be the only adult in the city incapable of understanding the instruction, “Press any key to begin.” Since all one has to do is enter a parking space number and toss in some money, I couldn’t help thinking the cell phone conversation he was carrying on must have been what kept him from comprehending what he was supposed to do.
With the clock ticking, I made the decision that it would be faster to run back and move my car to a machine that I knew would take my fee.
I ended up 10 minutes late. At least the speaker made me laugh.
By this point, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find my return route also backed up. In this case, the freeway was shut down to a single lane for what seemed like an endless stretch.
At least this time I saw the reason – a bulldozer was trying to knock down a tree. There was probably more to it, but that’s what I observed.
I had another meeting to attend that night. Not only did it turn out to be a lot farther and more remote than I anticipated, but I got stuck at the end of a long string of slow-moving vehicles on the way. The building was almost impossible to find in the dark, and ultimately, I ended up having to trudge up a long hill, alone, to find it.
I was late again.
It was a school district meeting, and as luck would have it, I was the only middle school parent present. Everybody else had high school students, so that’s where the meeting went. Adding insult to injury, the person who called the meeting left just 30 minutes into it.
As I made my way home that night with a stress-related knot in my stomach, I couldn’t help thinking that had been a lot of annoying stuff for a single day. Taken alone, any of those incidents wouldn’t have been a big deal. Piled on top of each other, it seemed like a lot to put up with.
Maybe it’s just the time of year. Christmas is lurking around the corner, and as usual, I’m nowhere near ready. My tree’s not up, my lawn decorations aren’t lit, and I still have a lot of shopping to do.
This seems like a good time to remember to slow down, keep things in perspective — and stock up on tranquilizers.
Traffic is annoying; so are slow cars and intrusive cell phone calls. But as long as we don’t see escape routes being broadcast on television – how bad can things really be?
Copyright 2008, Metropolitan News Company