Paving the Highway With My Life

When Life in the Boomer Lane wrote the post about Miracle the Cat (“Cats Flying off the Roof of My Car”), LBL was reminded that LBL has a long history of things in general flying off the roof of her car.  For the five people who have already read LBL’s post about Miracle, you are probably now saying “But Miracle didn’t fly off the roof!”  Yes, technically you are correct.  And, if she had, LBL certainly wouldn’t have written a post about that.  LBL already has a rap sheet with the animal shelter (future material, here).

But LBL digresses.  In the years LBL has been driving, things tend to fly off the roof of her car.  This occurs because LBL usually comes out of the house carrying a variety of objects, and the only way she can unlock her car door is to put one of those objects on the roof.  The Flying Objects involve mostly coffee mugs, and, in one case, her purse.  Luckily for LBL, a kind person found her purse lying in the middle of the street and returned it to her.

One day, LBL went out to the car for an appointment, placed her Daytimer on the roof of the car, breezed through the neighborhood and exited onto a main road.  It was a Sunday afternoon, and traffic was light.  LBL was sailing along at a steady clip when she began to notice via the rear view mirror that cars around her were acting rather erratically.  Next, LBL noticed that it seemed to be snowing unusually large rectangular flakes that the cars were swerving to avoid.  A sinking feeling (LBL is noticing a lot of sailing references here) led her to look at the seat to her right and to discover that the space usually occupied by her Daytimer was conspicuously vacant.

LBL immediately pulled over to the side of the road, and, in her high heels, began running all over the road chasing bits and pieces of her life.  The bits and pieces were not wearing high heels and so were traveling at a greater rate of speed than LBL was.  Now cars were swerving to avoid her.  Lots of pages, business cards, stamps, photos, an uncashed check and a coupon for a free bag of Sargento shredded cheddar were scattered along a route far too long for her to collect.  After an exhausting 30 minutes of running, collecting, and ignoring the screams of motorists, LBL had found only a small percent of what was in the Daytimer.

This was an event comparable, say, to her discovering that vast areas of North America had suddenly disappeared.  Without her Daytimer, LBL had no frame of reference for her life.  LBL had no addresses, no client list, no record of any upcoming appointments, no free cheddar.  Had anyone asked LBL what she was doing that day or for the next several months, or how many children she had, her answer, after careful consideration, would have been “I really don’t know.”

After an assessment of the pages and cards she was able to retrieve, LBL came to the rational conclusion that her life as she knew it, was gone.  LBL might as well have changed her name and moved to another country.  LBL had a new- found empathy for people who enter the Witness Protection Program or for all the people who populate her soaps who get amnesia.  Life had suddenly taken a dramatic turn, a serious state of affairs for someone with no sense of direction to begin with.

After reviewing her options and considering her age, profession, parental responsibilities, foreign language ability, and the good deal LBL got on her gym membership, LBL was forced to concede that she had to stay right where she was and attempt to reconstruct her life.  This took a long time and resulted in several missed appointments and failure to send a birthday card to her youngest child.

LBL must admit that, because of this last experience, she hasn’t put anything else on the roof of her car.  And LBL has a new-found respect for her Daytimer.  LBL thinks if she ever did decide to change her name and relocate, the Daytimer could carry on without her.  At least it, unlike her, would remember all her children’s birthdays.