Friday, July 3, 2009

What a Morning...

I’ll fully admit that I am not a morning person. If there is a need for me to bright and shiny in the a.m., I can certainly rise to the occasion, but typically, I am not with it. This morning in particular, I was a special case of space cadet. I woke up thinking that it was Saturday. It was wonderful, I rolled over, and started dreaming again. Twenty minutes later, reality some how crept into my dream and I woke with a start. It definitely was not Saturday, I had to jump out of bed and into the shower. Unfortunately, the night before the toilet had decided to continuously run, so periodically during my shower SCALDING hot water came shooting out.

After receiving some third degree burns during my shower, I struggled with every morning chore that I had to do, getting dressed, brushing my teeth, packing a lunch, etc. A hangover would have adequately explained my behavior, but I did not have one drink the night before. Finally, I got in my car and I was on my way, only to notice that my gas light was on. Really, gas, well at least I could stop and get a crappy cup of coffee in the seven eleven while I was filling up.

So, that’s what I did. I started pumping gas and headed in for a cup of joe. Ahh there’s no better smell on a rough morning than French Vanilla coffee, even from a gas station. For a moment, when the smell hits you, it’s as if you are transplanted into a real coffee shop and not a badly lit 7-11 where they are selling hot dogs right next to the counter. I decided to treat myself to a half coffee half cappuccino combo. I filled up my cup with the delightful coffee and started the cappuccino, which decided it didn’t want to work and was spraying hot water every where. Scalding shower number two.

I just wanted a cup of coffee. Take two was more successful that my first try, I didn’t burn any appendages on the second attempt. The bored man behind the counter had rang up my coffee before I had even gotten there. As I paid him, I was distracted by the shiny scratch off lotto tickets behind the glass… ooohhh pretty. I rationalized the purchase of lotto tickets with the knowledge that some of that money goes towards Illinois education… right?? The pretty shiny pink ticket looked too good to pass up. There’s just something about scratching off the possibility to win big.

With my lotto ticket in one hand and coffee in another, I hit the road. Traffic wasn’t so bad for a while. Expectedly, it came to a halt. Ahhh a perfect time to scratch and win! I pulled out my ticket. The bad thing about these tickets is that often there are fairly specific directions. Don’t they realize that people just want to scratch the shiny silver stuff off the whole ticket and see the words WIN with the amount of money? I don’t want to have think when I am doing a scratch off lotto ticket. The pink lotto ticket was one of the difficult ones, it had stars and number matching and some sort of code. It was made even more difficult by the periodic glace up at traffic to move and brake when needed. I finally understood it, star = good, matching numbers = good. So I started to scratch. Of course, when I did so, traffic also started to move.

After scratching all the numbers I realized I was about 10 cars length away from the car in front of me. I hit the gas and started brushing off the silver scratch off dust…. and SLAMMED into the car in front of me. CRAP!!

I was probably going no more than five miles per hour, but enough to probably do some sort of damage. We made eye contact in our rear view mirrors. I was really hoping he wasn’t going to call the police. Mentally, I was running through all the things that my dad taught me, never apologize, give insurance info, give registrations… oh man, this sucked.

The man got out of his black Acura and looked like a regular guy. He looked at his car, and said that there didn’t look like there was a whole lot of damage. I of course, didn’t say much, because my instinct was to say, “I’m sorry,” so every mental ability went to not blurting that out. So, I stood there with basically nothing to say, no makeup on, my hair undid, thank goodness I dressed well that morning. After just standing there and looking at him I decided he was a very handsome middle aged man. He reminded me of the dad in a great American commercial for something like a Weber grill.

I wrote down my information and gave it to him. It pained me to try and even crunch the numbers of what the damage may end up costing, so I tried just as hard not to think about that as I did not to think about apologizing. After uttering no more than 20 words to the poor man, we exchanged good byes. His final message to me was “things happen, have a good morning!” I thought to myself, now had I won the lotto, that would have been good morning!