Alisha and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
My mom told me that when I was in elementary school, after my class read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day we were given the assignment to write about our very own terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days–mine ended up being all about my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mom…and, so far, she hasn’t let me live to forget about it (not that I even remember writing it in the first place). Well, today the theme remained the same, but my mother will be happy to know she is in no way culpable for what was one of the worst overall days I’ve had in recent memory. Now I shall proceed with the melodramatic whining…
Everyone has those days when nothing seems to go right, and I’m sure that we all feel like we get more than our fair share of these particular days…but I’m convinced that this actually is the case for me. I’ve decided that my life’s equilibrium settles at a frustrating, yet seemingly manageable level of crappiness, interspersed with brief periods of excitement and/or happiness. My one comfort is that I’m fully able to appreciate those moments of happiness because they are so completely out of the ordinary for me. But as happens in science, equilibrium is eventually reestablished, and life reverts back to mediocrity and mundanity, sprinkled with encounters with incompetence for good measure. Queue the government workers.
This morning I had to go to the auto tag agency to have the title of my car transferred to my name. I’d downloaded forms, collected all the various papers my dad had sent me and headed off to be there first thing when it opened so I could get in and get out so I wouldn’t be too ridiculously late for work. The place I’d found online turned out to be in a sketchy area…much too like the rather dodgy-looking neighborhoods just west of my house, the kind of places where you glance at your car doors when you’re stopped at red lights just to triple check you’ve locked them. Anyplace that seems dodgy at 9 in the morning just doesn’t sit well with me. The office was in this old mall that was full of stores that looked like they’d been put in a time capsule circa 1986, with furniture stores with white enameled furniture and clothing stores with cheap pastel women’s suits kitted out with shoulder pads suitable for any linebacker. It was quiet when I walked in and most of the stores weren’t open. There were several people sprawled out on benches waiting for the stores to open and I suddenly felt very self conscious of my shoes as I clacked noisily over the brown, slick tiles.
I lined up behind the fifteen or so people who were already waiting outside the tag agency, and when they opened up I got a number and took a seat. After I sat down I was going over my paperwork to make sure everything was in order when I realized I had forgotten to check the mileage on the odometer. I got up and walked through the mall, almost breaking my neck as the heels of my shoe skipped out from under me. (I’m notorious for nearly falling over, but somehow I almost always manage a recovery, thankfully!) I got the reading and hurried back before my number was called, nearly falling over another half dozen times. Once I’d sat down I wrote down the mileage on the paperwork, and then realized I didn’t have the insurance information…it was in my glove box. So I had to hazard missing my number being called (and another dozen near falls) to run out to my car and back again. Back in my seat, I thought I had everything at last, until I realized I hadn’t written down the license plate. I couldn’t remember if my old one had been replaced, but by that point I was prepared to lie and say later that I’d forgotten in order to save myself another trip to the car and another potential injury to my coccyx.
When I was called up, the girl behind the glass was very helpful and the whole thing didn’t take long at all. The wait hadn’t seemed that bad since I was running back and forth to the parking lot, which had allowed me to spend as little time in the grim little waiting room as possible. The highlight of the experience was when one man saluted me as he walked by–how often do these things happen in a lifetime? I was in a good mood when I left the agency by 9:30 and made it in to work by 10.
Once I’d begun to sip on my third coffee of the morning, I realized that the woman at the office had said she would send the new title to me in two weeks. That’s all well and good, but the only address she could have on record for me was the one she’d copied from my driver’s license, which is my old Orlando address that I haven’t lived at in over a year now. I called up to see what address they would send the title to and if I could change it over the phone, but the woman on the other end said they couldn’t change it–I’d have to come in person. She couldn’t even tell me what they had on file for me over the phone. So, after barely being at work for an hour and a half, I had to ask my boss if I could leave again to straighten this all out.
In a mad dash back to the tag agency during my lunch break I was in a foul mood because I had to go back and wait all over again, on top of other personal issues that weren’t helping to brighten my disposition any at all. And of course it was then that some jerk decided to slam on his brakes and try to kill me! Maybe that wasn’t his original intent, but, at any rate, my antilock brakes seized up and I thought I was going to plow into the back of the guy in front of me when he stopped short at a light. I think I stopped about a foot away, but I was only within an inch of having a severe cardiac arrest. My pulse was racing from all the caffeine I’d had as it was! My heart can only take so much…
I made it back to the shady mall in one piece and found myself back in the same dirty blue chair I’d been saluted in earlier that morning. When my number was finally called and I went up to the desk, it was only to find out that they had my correct address all along, and that my near-death experience and my forfeited lunch break were all in vain. I clacked glumly back through the mall, past the hideous furniture store, and headed back to work where I brooded for the remainder of the day.
Hmm…I guess it doesn’t sound like the most terrible, most horrible, most no good very bad day there could possibly be, but it was pretty darn grim through the living. It did, however, get better when 6 o’clock rolled around and I came home to the last night of tired leftover tacos, had a chat with Kel and a drink. I then put on a documentary I’d recorded called The Origin of Aids and watched in shame those people who truly have claim to the title of this post. Nothing like a little perspective to shut me up…well, not before I’d had a chance to rant. Okay, now I’m done.
On a positive note, I’ve made friends with the local duck! There’s a huge duck that waddles around my building and lives on the lake behind me, and today when I got out of my car he started running down the sidewalk to meet me. He stopped, and when I called out to him he started coming closer. I held my hand out and he pecked it, although he didn’t seem too pleased there was no reward for him out of the deal, so I went inside and brought him a piece of bread, which he snapped up. Maybe I’ll forgo the cat and leave a trail of breadcrumbs up the stairs and into my apartment…
Tags: Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Travel, work
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