Random dumb thoughts

This page is to put those little weirdnesses of life that don't really fit anywhere else, or aren't worth a page of their own

Monday, January 20, 2003

Annoyance and Tragedy

There are those things that are truly tragic. And then there are those minor events which really scare the bejeezus out of you and really piss you off, but are really unimportant in the grand scheme of things. In the last 24 hours I've experienced both, and for those few hardy souls that actually check this page from time to time, I'll tell you about them. Annoyances first.

Okay, so today I'm REALLY out of it. I got back quite late from New Haven last night, and I didn't have any food in the house to cook for lunch and dinner this week. So this morning after spending 45 minutes in the gym to start to think about working off the massive quantities of food that I consumed this weekend, I finally get ready to go to the grocery store. I'm really hungry, and I'm concentrating on what I can get at the store to eat. As I pull into the parking space, I get out of the car. There's a nagging feeling that I haven't gone through enough "steps" to get out of the car, so I look down at the gear stick, because every once in a while I don't put the car in park. I look down, the column is on "P". Okay, so I get out of the car. I wander around the store for about 40 minutes, doing my shopping, picking up stuff, looking at sales, etc. I then check out in the "do-it-yourself" lane -- which takes longer half the time, but I don't really mind it that much. Really dishonest people could really make out on that line, though. So after I scarf down some of the nuts I've just bought, because I'm starving at this point, I fish around in my pockets for my car keys. House keys only in my pocket, no car key. No biggie, I think, I must have put them in their 'home base' in my purse. I look in the compartment where the keys are, no car key. I then start fishing around the purse, and start dumping everything out. No car key. One of the baggers sees me doing this, and says he'll watch my groceries while I check the car to see if I've locked the keys inside the car. So I head over to my car, and I notice that exhaust is coming out of the tailpipe of my car. Congratulations, we now have an high-scoring entry in the STUPIDEST THING LILY HAS EVER DONE category. Not only have I locked the keys in my car for the first time in my life, I've left the car running for about 45 minutes with the keys locked inside of the car. Now there's the minor panic setting in -- because these are the cars with the ships in the keys, it's harder to break into the cars without doing serious damage. If the car hadn't been running, I wouldn't have cared much at all -- I either would have called a cab or taken the bus home, gotten the extra key, come back and fixed it. But the car is running -- I have no idea what to do. I realize that I'm very close to the home of a co-worker, who coincidently used to live in my building, and I happen to have the "emergency home phone list" with me as well. So I call him, and he calls his wife on their cell phone who just happens to be in the other grocery store across the street. She comes, picks me up, drives me home to get my spare key and brings me back. Crisis over. I'm really grateful to my co-worker and his wife, and now there's a very nice bottle of wine in it for them. This is in the annoyance category, although I did get some nice sympathy from the staff at the Harris Teeter.

Now for tragedy. I'm not sure how big this played on the national circuit, but true tragedy hit New Haven very early Friday morning. A car full of 9 DKE brothers were returning from New York City, and hit a tractor-trailer that jackknifed on I-95. Three of them were killed instantly, another died later, and three more remain in the hospital in bad shape. From what I understand, this event has nearly wiped out both the local chapter of DKE and the Yale baseball team -- both of which are institutions that Dubya belonged to back in his days at Yale. From what I heard, the kids hadn't done anything stupid, the driver wasn't drunk -- just really, really unlucky. Sunday morning, my friends and I happened to come across a stream of students heading out of Battell Chapel and heading back to Davenport College. It was clear that they were heading out of a memorial service. I'm not sure if I'll ever forget how those kids looked -- stunned, crying, shellshocked and like the entire world had fallen in on them. When you're 18 you think you're immortal, and these kids had just found out in the most brutal way that you're not. Each of my friends recalled an individual case when we were at school of an untimely death of a student (one in my class died over Lockerbie), but nothing like this had ever hit us. This is a tragedy -- talk about bright lives cut untimely short.

I don't really have an up note to end on on this. Sorry. Just spend a little time thinking about what you have as opposed to what you don't.

.: posted by Lily Monday, January 20, 2003

Comments by: YACCS