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In my first post, I posed a question: If a Jewish blogger blogs, but doesn’t comment on anyone else’s blog, will anyone notice?
The answer, apparently, is no. I have had zero daily hits since my first post. I guess nobody has any sort of google alert up to snag new Jewish bloggers as they sprout out of the loam.
I was wading through the rainwater collected on the side of the house when I noticed an earthworm wiggling away under the water. It was headed away from the soil at a very decent clip.
I placed my foot in its way, hoping to convince it to turn around, but it just kept burrowing under my foot, which tickled. So I reached down to pick it up and throw it back onto the soil, but it recoiled from my fingers and started away from them. I pinched its tail, and it began moving away toward the soil quickly. Whenever it slowed down, I pinched again, and it would dart away. I was impressed by how quickly its undulations propelled it through the water.
When it hit the soil it began moving at a more purposeful pace, clearly grateful to have reached someplace it recognized again. It was soon burrowing under a weed.
I feel like that earthworm, sometimes.
I work hard, shoving myself along on some path I believe is right, when suddenly I hit something hot and ungiving. I can’t go forward, so I try to go around. But it keeps blocking me, prodding and pushing until I have no choice but to go in another direction entirely. I move slowly and unwillingly, only propelled by the occasional pinch. It is only when I reach the soil that I realize how badly I was aiming before, and how fortunate I am that the pinches directed me in a better direction.
I have one advantage over the worm. The worm doesn’t know who pushed it back toward the land, but I know who directs me. And I’ve begun to recognize the pinches, and look up and say, “OK, I’ve been heading wrong, which way do you want to me go?” It’s more painless this way. And I’ve never been disappointed. The Great Pincher up in the sky has never pinched me wrong. I’m very grateful. Thank you, Hashem, for looking after me so carefully.
Water is such a magnificent item. People always look at me strange when I ask for water at a Shobbos table. I usually lift my glass, swirl it around, and declare, “Water, God’s beverage of choice. You just can’t do better.”
This past Shobbos, at a Shobbos kallah table devoid of males, I felt comfortable declaiming on the wonder that is water.
Water, first of all, is liquid at the temperatures we most need it. This is not the case of most things in the world.
Liquidity is a beautiful property, I think. It occurs when molecules are attracted enough to each other that they stick together, but not enough that they can’t move past each other or around each other. If the molecules didn’t have just the right amount of cohesion to each other, we wouldn’t be able to pour it, collect it, spray it, or do the many other magnificent things we can do with water. Life would not be viable if water wasn’t, for the most part, liquid.
Water does have other marvelous properties. Unlike almost any other fluid, it is less dense in its solid form than its liquid. Meaning, its ice floats. Just think what would happen if ice sank as it formed. Life in oceans and ponds and rivers would never survive winter. We would have no fish, no ice skating, no icebergs in our punch bowls. It would be more difficult to cool our drinks, because the coldness generated by the ice would just sit in the bottom of the glass and never circulate on convection current to the top unless we stirred it.
Water has a very high specific heat. That means it takes a large application of heat to raise its temperature, and also takes longer to lose heat once it’s acquired it. If water didn’t have that property, temperate regions would vary between being burning hot and frigidly cold throughout the year.
Furthermore, water contains only two elements: hydrogen and oxygen. Oxygen is the most necessary element for survival. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is really just a proton and a neutron. Both form a pretty important part of the aerobic respiration that powers us as human beings. Our cells actually perform atomic fission and fusion, breaking up glucose and releasing protons alone, which are later caught up and combined with negatively charged oxygen atoms to form… yup, water.
Most of our blood plasma is water. Water is thick enough to carry things around our body, but thin enough not to clog up our capillaries. It monitors our body temperature. It washes out our kidneys. It cools us when we’re hot. It forms most of our cells, our skin, our body…
Water is beautiful. It is probably one of the most photographed occurrences in nature. Oceans, rivers, lakes, streams, waterfalls, raindrops, droplets hitting a water surface… we’re just crazy over water. And for good reason. It is clear enough to show us what lies beneath, but adds a pure, shiny gleam to it. It can be dark, opaque, and mysterious, it can be white and frothy, it can be a clean blue reflection of sky, or a spinning silver vortex. It’s optical properties are worthy of a discussion of their own; perhaps after I take physics.
Why would anyone dilute their water with hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, and other impurities? Water is an incredible creation, designed in the greatest laboratory specifically for the consumption of human beings. Enjoy it – l’chaim!
I love rainstorms. I used to love them more.
When I was a child I would hang out the window, inhaling the fresh air, getting drunk on the damp scent that only comes with a cleansing storm. I would head out into the streets to splash in puddles and race sticks in the gutter and get wet.
I haven’t done that in years.
These days it seems storms only come when I’m trying to go somewhere. The puddles in the gutter splash mud on my tights or soak my skirt making the commute miserable and the office or classroom uncomfortable. The umbrella is always a pain to carry and store. Even if the storm happens on a weekend, I’m busy studying or working or otherwise involved in something that I can’t interrupt for the simple pleasure of enjoying a storm.
Today I did.
I was going to fix up the dolls when it started thundering. I thought, “Oh shucks, I was just getting settled, too bad” and then I thought, “No, the dolls are not important, you need a storm.”
I was right.
Thunderstorms are beautiful.
Have you ever looked at thunderheads? Tall gray clouds, their many curves and curlicues outlined and accented by a silvery edge from the sun, scudding rapidly across the sky. Beautiful.
Have you ever looked at the air, when it is almost opaque with rain, and the house across the street appears misty as if through fogged glass?
Have you looked at the trees, their colors heightened by the rain, rivulets of water glistening as they run down the bark and gather in crystalline pools between the lumpy roots?
Have you looked at the leaves, bowed gratefully beneath the laden droplets, pointing them down toward their thirsty roots?
Have you seen the treetops, tossing lustily in a wind you don’t feel, throwing their branches about with an equine spirit and suppleness you never suspected they had?
Have you walked barefoot on the wet, spongy grass, felt the spring of quenched flora and saturated earth beneath your feet? Have you walked through the warm puddles, felt the liquid flow around your foot comfortably? Noticed the gleam of light off the edges of ripples, and the glassy clearness of the liquid? The shinier, fresher color of the blacktop, cement, hose, paint, everything…?
Have you spread your arms to feel the falling drops as the plants feel them, their gentle sting as they strike, the star-like splash pattern on your skin?
And of course, don’t forget the beautiful sound and light show in the sky – the lightning arcing gracefully from cloud to cloud, the many different rumbles that accompany different flashes…
After a half-hour, the storm slowed to a trickle. I felt as relaxed and as bright as all the plants with their newly heightened colors.
Why don’t I do this more often?
I think God has something against me seeing Shakespeare in the Park.
It’s a free performance put on by NY Public Theater in the Delacourte Theater in Central Park. The only catch: you have to wait on line for tickets, which are handed out at 1 p.m. before the night’s 8 p.m. performance.
I’ve been on the line three or four times with equal success each time: failure.
I learned the hard way that 9 a.m. is just too late to show up. On the last Sunday of any showing, even 7 a.m. is too late. Too many times I’ve walked off without a ticket after spending hours waiting in the sun and shade. Once, me and B even waited on the standby line, in case anyone returned tickets. We spent, literally, the entire Sunday waiting on line. We got standby tickets. Then it started to rain. That was one of the most crushing disappointments in my life.
I had grand plans for this final showing of Hamlet. I was going to bring a tent at 5 a.m., plenty of entertainment, and varied friends and make a fun day of it. And best of all, I was definitely going to get a ticket. But the weatherman swore it would be rainy all day, and I was afraid of having a miserable wait on line only to be rained out again.
So I called it off.
Well guess who was irritated when it was sunny and beautiful all morning until 2 p.m.? 1 p.m. is when they hand out the tickets. Then there was a brief thunderstorm.
“Good,” I said grumpily, “I hope it rains straight through 8 p.m. and beyond.” I didn’t want to have to live with the fact that I’d missed my chance once again.
As I sat and watched the rainstorm, I realized how childish and petulant I sounded. My high rate of failure had something almost supernatural about it. Maybe I was being prevented from attending the show by the Almighty. Why? No idea. Granted, I swore off theater at some point during middle school, but I always assumed it left exception for things like IMAX and public theater.
I sat on the moist grass under a tree and watched the rain pour down, splattering the concrete and beating down the leaves. So I would miss Shakespeare in the Park. Yet again. But all those people who had spent the morning waiting – their wait shouldn’t have been in vain. Let them enjoy the show that, for some reason, I couldn’t.
There’s a certain moral lesson to all the time and effort I’ve devoted to seeing a Shakespeare in the Park show. I devote tons of time and effort to all sorts of things, some of them bizarrely pointless, except that they give me the pleasure of a difficult task completed. SitP is one of them. I want to see the show now not just because I want to see Hamlet performed live, but because I’ve failed so many times that it’s become a difficulty I feel compelled to surmount, like Hilary’s Everest.
I’ve been about as successful as Hilary, but unlike him, I have the chance to retry.
But maybe I shouldn’t. I mean, there are so many other, more worthy things to spend my time on. Every time I find myself doing something like this I think, “I really need to get involved in a cause.” I’ve got the energy and fire, why can’t I devote it to something worthwhile? The dolls, I think, were a worthy cause. Simchas kallah. That was time and effort well spent. But The New Yorker project? Shakespeare in the Park? Rollerblading the entire Riverside Park? Teaching myself the physics SAT? Even BadforShidduchim? What’s the point? Do these things accomplish anything beyond boosting my confidence? Shouldn’t I do something that also benefits others?
…and yet, I don’t know what. I’m not comfortable visiting strangers in hospitals, and I think that’s a dubious chesed at any rate. I don’t deal well with disabled children just because I can’t do the whole fakey excited thing. I suspect I’m a bit too much of a snob for kiruv, but mostly, the responsibility frightens me. And I don’t even know how to go about doing something like baking for a bikur cholim or whatever other little non-interpersonal stuff there is to do.
I have this lurking idea that one thing I won’t mind doing and will do well is make money. I don’t mind giving tzedakah generously because my needs are few and I really do feel guilty about the ease and luxury of my life. But it’ll be a few years yet before I start earning real money, and there’s a chance I’ll end up married with a family first, which would divert my income. I really feel like I ought to be doing something more with my life, but I don’t know what. Sometimes I feel like a serious waste of space. Everything I do seems to be in pursuit of personal satisfaction.
What – what- what can I do for others?
I decided to watch the thunderstorm today.
I haven’t done that in a while.
It’s very sad how during the year I’m so busy with school and work I really don’t have time to smell the roses. But today was Sunday, and there was nothing to do that couldn’t be pushed off, so I went out into the backyard to watch the thunderstorm.
I think thunderstorms are beautiful.
The brief, jagged slashes of light that are so beautiful are caused by differences in electric potential between clouds. The lightning balances the electric charges by transferring electrons from one point to another. It’s just static electricity on a large scale. And yet so pretty. The thunder is the sonic boom that comes from the rapid movement of matter faster than the speed of sound.
Science aside, there’s nothing more pleasant than relaxing under a tree or on a porch watching the rain pour down and the lightning flash while listening to the rumble and crash of thunder. It’s idyllic, pleasant, relaxing, and conducive to thought.
I didn’t always enjoy thunderstorms. Like most children, I found them frightening. When I was quite young, I used to wake up and read the entire Shema from fear. Usually it took me until the storm was over, which made me feel that my prayers were answered.
It wasn’t the lightning that frightened me. It was the thunder. The loud noise. The crashing, booming, banging, like dishes falling onto a stone floor and shattering into a million pieces.
Then I learned what lightning and thunder are. I learned that the frightening part is the lightning. The thunder does nothing. And I realized that it was foolish to be afraid of the thunder. And so, from then on, during storms, I kept telling myself to be frightened of the lighting, not the thunder. It didn’t work; I never did become frightened of lightning, but I eventually lost my fear of thunder.
Sitting under the tree watching the storm, it occurred to me that I’m often frightened of the wrong thing in life. The noise and rumble make me feel timid while I pay little attention to the impending bolt of disaster.
Large, authoritative people intimidate me. I don’t deal well with important bosses. Once I get the idea that someone is important, I feel relatively insignificant, and I shrink from bothering them with my questions. And forget about the bosses who cultivate the imposing, authoritarian air. I positively shrink in their presence.
It’s wrong, it’s unhealthy, and it often makes me forget what I really should be frightened of: failing in my duties. Because when you’re loath to ask a question when you’re uncertain or wave a red flag when something is wrong, things just snowball until disaster strikes.
I could come up with a dozen examples of this from my life, but one stands out as truly disastrous. I wish I could say it taught me the lesson, but it didn’t. Every circumstance is different, and it’s only afterwards that I can clearly say, “I was stupid, stupid, stupidly intimidated.”
I was hired and trained as pool operator for a local day camp. This means I was sent to an expensive, government-required course to learn all aspects of managing a swimming pool, which ostensibly should have made me an expert on all the problems related to swimming pools. So I felt I should be perfectly capable of managing the pools myself without trouble.
Well, nothing works like in the textbook. In the textbook they say if the chlorine reading is bright pink, it’s too high; if it’s pale or colorless, it’s too low. They don’t tell you what to do if, after you drop in the tab, the liquid briefly flashes bright pink, then becomes colorless, and the tab develops bright pink spots and refuses to dissolve. What does that mean? I had no idea. I knew the small wading pools smelled funny, but at the course they’d said the “swimming pool” smell usually comes from too little chlorine – the scent is caused by the ammonia formed when there isn’t enough chlorine to clean the pool properly. This was supported by the colorless chlorine test results. And yet, my intuition, my nose, and my pump system told me there was plenty of chlorine in the pool – possibly too much.
I was totally stumped. What I would have liked to do was empty the pool and experiment with the filter and chlorinator system, but the Big Boss was adamant that every child must swim every day, and any request to shut down the wading pools would surely be refused. Besides, she didn’t take me seriously, pool-operator course or not. As far as she was concerned, I was a 20-year-old child, not to be trusted. She was bound to treat any such “expert” recommendation from me as irritating bumptiousness.
So I didn’t ask.
Bad move. One piece of wisdom I’ve learned: always put the ball in the boss’s court when it comes to things like that. This way, when things go wrong, it’s not your fault.
Because the day arrived when a child stepped out of the wading pool with reddish marks all over. The chlorine level was way too high and it burned his skin. They hosed him and all the other children down, but the Big Boss still had to deal with a furious mother and a threatened health inspection. It turned out the pump was too strong for the small pool and was pumping chlorine too fast even at the lowest level. Only by diluting a water sample four times could I reach a level low enough to get results on the chlorine test. I was so far in the doghouse I was just short of being thrown out of the establishment. The only thing that stopped them was that nobody else had the required pool operator certificate.
I cried for three nights straight because I realized that I should have been more assertive. If I hadn’t been intimidated by the Big Boss, I would have insisted that the pools be shut down and monitored. Then no child would have gotten hurt. Then the boss wouldn’t have been confirmed in her belief that I wasn’t mature enough for the job. And then I’d still have my self-respect. But no – I’d cowered from the thunder, and been hit by the lighting.
Perhaps I should follow the model that worked for me as a child. If I just keep reminding myself that the lightning is the frightening part, eventually I’ll stop being afraid of the thunder.
I enjoyed a thunderstorm today. Here are things I thought while sitting on the grass under a tree, watching the rain fall, the trees toss, and the lightning flash.
There’s something hurtful about being called arrogant unjustly.
OK, it’s always a bit hurtful to be called arrogant, but I usually appreciate the heads up. I’ll be the first one to admit that I have my arrogant moments. I’m always grateful when God follows it up by taking me down a few notches, though I don’t enjoy the embarrassment that usually accompanies it. But when I’m not being arrogant – when I’m actually trying to be helpful – it hurts to be called arrogant.
I wonder if that’s how doctor wossisname felt when I interviewed him. He was supposed to be advising pre-med students at Touro, and he told many of them that they should give up before spending too much time on it. They called him arrogant, high-and-mighty, know-it-all, etc. I was intrigued, and having just finished a project on The New Yorker magazine, I was eager to try a Wolcott Gibbs job on someone. He seemed like a perfect candidate. Nobody seemed to like him.
I interviewed a number of people who had interviewed with him, and I sent in a friend to ask rigged questions. There seemed no doubt that the man was a bit full of himself and his accomplishments and his power as a doctor. Then I went in to interview him myself. He seemed an ordinary guy, trying to do his job, and doing it conscientiously. He didn’t pull any of the smarty-pants stuff people reported to me. Finally, I asked him, “Do you know that you have a reputation as arrogant and overbearing?”
He looked so hurt, I felt terrible.
I never printed the article. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know whose version of him was right – mine, or the other students. And even if he did act a bit full of himself – don’t we all, when we find ourselves in the position of knowledgeable one and disseminator of wisdom?
I wrote the article, trying to make it balanced and fair. Most students agreed it was. But I didn’t print it. I hated to play God, to use my power as editor-in-chief to play games with a man’s reputation. I just couldn’t do it.
That single article, more than anything else, drove me away from any possible journalistic career. How could I live with myself if I spent my life portraying people, ideas, organizations… all potentially so different than how they really are?
That was when I decided I wanted a career that didn’t deal with people as the business. I’d rather deal with numbers, with objects, with things that have measurable and indisputable properties, and that don’t suffer when you misjudge them.
That is one of the many, many deeper reasons I decided to become an engineer.
I was thinking that a friend of mine hasn’t really been successful. It’s a harsh and judgemental thing to think, so let me explain: in high school she was always involved in the charities drives, big and little sister programs, kiruv, fundraising, mentoring, you name it. Since she graduated, she’s pretty much bounced from being a preschool assistant at one school to being a preschool assistant at another, usually not returning or even quitting because she claims to disagree with the teaching techniques being employed. She’s been working on one of those correspondence mickey-mouse degrees for years and years with little headway made.
It definitely doesn’t sound like she’s accomplishing much to me.
And yet I get no sign that she’s at all bothered by her wobbly trajectory. Which makes me wonder if her idea of success is completely different from mine. Maybe she is accomplishing something by her own standards. What standards, I don’t understand.
So now I’m wondering, what is success? How many ways are there to be successful? Is it possible to be a complete and utter failure? Can you be successful without knowing it or wanting it? Does success depend solely on context, or is there an objective yardstick of success?
It wasn’t really one of those days. The day itself was good. It was just one of those afternoons and evenings. Tzippy was supposed to leave Lakewood at 2:30 and arrive around 4 so we could shop for a friend’s shower. At 6:45 I wanted to rush off to a book signing in Boro Park, picking up a friend along the way at 7. Then I had to leave after around 15 minutes to speed to karate all the way in farthest Flatbush. It was tight, but if everything went smoothly, it could work.
After 21 years of life, I still harbor the naïve belief that plans tend to go smoothly. It’s a crippling habit I have to work on eradicating.
Anyway, things started going wrong at 4 pm. I had spent the day working on the dancing dolls, but at 4 I ran out of duct tape and had to stop. Tzippy hadn’t even called yet.
So I called her.
She said she was still on the Staten Island Parking Lot and she’d give me a ring when she was in the neighborhood.
I had nothing much to do, so I went to find a snack, check my email, read some blogs, etc. I should have just curled up with a book.
My mother decided that she needed some takeout side dishes to supplement dinner, so she told me to pick some up when I went shopping. No problem. No problem except that by 5:00 Tzippy was still stuck in traffic, this time in good ol’ Brooklyn. She said there were accidents all over and traffic was abysmal. By the time we finally left – 5:30 – we had exactly 45 minutes to do our shopping, pick up dinner, and get home.
Target was terrible. It’s a small store on Flatbush Avenue, and the selection was approximately zero. Just so you know.
While we were ringing up the purchase, Tzippy went to bring the car around. Theoretically, this should have saved us time. This being one of those days, it didn’t.
But first thing first: I had a lot of fun carrying all those bags and boxes from the cash register to Flatbush Avenue. I put two bags in the bucket and balanced the mop and broom between my fingers and shoulder, then grabbed the other three bags in my other hand, tucked my chin over the sliding broom handle, and, completely tangled up like this, gaped helplessly at the food processor box.
I put everything down and started again.
The cashier looked on in idle curiosity.
I picked up the box first and balanced it against one hip, carefully bent over to pick up the bucket with the other hand, and then grabbed the rest of the bags with individual fingers from the box-holding hand. Oh wait – the broom and mop. What about them?
I put everything down again.
“You can take the wagon out,” the cashier said. A good point, except we hadn’t parked in the garage and I really needed to get everything down the escalator. But I piled everything into the cart and rolled it to the escalator. It was easier from there.
I pushed the food processor box onto the escalator and then picked up everything else, ran down ahead of the box, put the stuff down, and then scooped the box off the escalator as it rode down. The people behind me cheered.
I picked up all the bags and broom and mop and used my foot to push the box across the carpeting to the door. A kind patron held the door for me. I shifted the mop and broom to my elbow, steadied them with my chin, bent over to give the box a bear hug, and staggered out to the street, bent like a little old lady. Tzippy was nowhere to be seen, and it was raining.
Did I mention it was one of those afternoons?
I waited about five minutes. Because of the way the streets worked and traffic rerouted, she had to drive halfway home before she could turn around and come back up Flatbush Avenue.
Great.
We sped to E. 13th and J where I ran into Glatt Zone, pointed at 3 random items, and told him to give me a pound and a half of each. I almost danced in agony as he tooks his time bagging each container and tucking it neatly into a shopping bag. I grabbed it and ran out. Then I decided to be really rude, and left Tzippy to carry the stuff in while I leaped into my parents’ car and zoomed off to Boro Park.
Turns out my passenger was behind schedule too. I had called from Tzippy’s phone post-takeout and she said she was in middle of giving a kid a bath. Not having a cell phone of my own, I parked by a hydrant and went to the address I’d been given and tried to figure out which door of the two-family house was hers. I put my ear against one – there was classical music playing. I put my ear against the other – some kid jabbered loudly. I rang the doorbell, asked for Chav, and waited on the fence.
We were only about 10 minutes behind schedule by then. Not so bad. We even found parking on 50th Street. A big empty spot right behind a driveway. Great. I lined up my minivan and started backing in.
There’s honking, but this is Boro Park. There’s always honking. So I didn’t even pay attention until Chav said “Um” and I turned and saw that my passenger door was wedged against the driver’s door of some idiot who tried driving past me on a narrow street. I straightened out and pulled over. He straightened out and parks about 2/3 into the street. He shows me a teeny scratch on his already dented mirror and then rubs three layers of dirt off his driver door to show me the three-inch rub I’d made. I couldn’t believe he really asked for my number. I knew I should have taken a photo, but didn’t have a camera. I should have gotten his contact info too, but didn’t have anything to write it on. There were a lot of things I should have done, but a bus that had easily driven past my van but was honking at his car for being in middle of the street. And I was behind schedule again.
Yeah, it was that kind of afternoon. Hit the curb while parking, then straightened out and was so distracted I parked in front of the driveway, had to turn the engine back on and back up… just minor annoyances, but they didn’t enhance the evening.
We dashed to Eichlers, got our books, said our hellos, and dashed back. I sped to karate, but there was a fire on Ocean Avenue, and I had to reroute. Traffic hadn’t improved much. Found parking a few blocks away, dashed in 10 minutes late. “It’s been one of those days,” I called apologetically as I ran past the class. They were just starting, though, because the instructor had been having that kind of day too. Her regular babysitter couldn’t come and her stand-in was having trouble with the baby.
I ran into the changing room and jumped into my gi. Then I ran out and joined the runners. “Um… psst,” the instructor hissed as I passed. I looked up.
“Your belt,” she said.
Sigh!
I jogged back and found my belt.
Things improved from there, though. All the worries of insurance claims and work left undone dissolved as we worked out the best defense against elbow jabs and then applied the same dynamics to a defense against a shoulder grab from behind. I was feeling great by the time I changed back into street clothes, and we all chattered as we put on our shoes after. I said good night and walked out, feeling that something wasn’t right…
“You left your bag!” the instructor called.
I went back in to retrieve it.
“I guess it’s still one of those days,” I grinned. She laughed and started closing the shutter, and then realized she hadn’t turned off the light inside.
“It’s still one of those days for me too,” she said ruefully.
We laughed together, and “that type of day” didn’t seem so bad anymore as we wished each other good night.
Driving home, I grappled with the problem of what to tell my father about the car. On the one hand, nothing might come of it that I couldn’t handle myself. Also, he gets pretty overwrought when we do something stupid, or do something to his car, or do something that costs a heckuvalot of money. I’d potentially done all three, so he was not going to be happy. In fact, he was going to lecture me about proper protocol when in an accident and make me recite back the lesson, and basically rub my nerves raw. It would be a perfect finale to a rotten evening. Then again, he would tell me exactly what to do in case of an accident so I would never do anything dumb and costly with any car again.
I decided it was middos-building time. I would confess my sin, eat crow, stay calm, and come out wiser and morally the better for it.
It was as bad as I imagined. I had to write down what I should give and what I should get at the scene of any accident, and then read them back, and then recite them from memory. “This is good for you,” I kept telling myself. “Better learn this now then the hard way.” I stayed totally cool, but finally, I had to make my point. “All this vast knowledge of how to deal with a vehicle run-in,” I asked, “How many accidents did it take you to amass it all?”
He looked sheepish and smiled as he answered, “More than I’d like to admit.” But he got my point. We parted on good terms, and I was quite proud of myself.
Then I went to sleep, which is the best ending to any day, in my opinion.
