This year, James’ birthday fell on a Tuesday. Now I know June seems like old news, but seriously. After you read this story maybe you’ll cut me some slack.
So the morning started like most mornings. I’m getting out of the shower and Nate is peeing for a really long time. I figure out it’s because he’s doing one thing with one hand, while wiggling his upper right cuspid with the other. Out it pops (the tooth, not the other thing), and that means the Tooth Fairy’s on night shift tonight.
It’s a normal day at work, except for the part where James apprehends a thief. He channels his old SaveMart bagger days by realizing he’s sold one of his most expensive shirts to a scrawny kid with a backpack and a bus ticket, whose name certainly isn’t Dani with an i. So he hoofs it to the central bus stop, confronts the guy with total SLO-town disregard for the dangers of the world, and recovers all manner of stolen items as Not-Dani empties his pockets, swan dives out of his backpack… and runs.
I make a stop at the Whole Paycheck before zipping home for birthday dinner and creme brûlées.
Followed by a soccer game that night for Crystal Palace. As the dainty name implies, we weren’t that good. As I’m pulling into the turf fields parking lot, the Rat Mobile makes an excruciating screeching noise and a stranger warns me I’ll most certainly die if I drive my car home that night. I follow my typical electronics protocol and hope it will cure itself if I just go chase a ball around on fake grass.
After my game, after driving a circle and attracting attention from all manner of soccer players and fields of horses with my excruciating nails on a steel chalkboard screeching, I pull the Rat Mobile back into the parking spot and get my work teammate, Nick, to drive me home. Thank goodness he drove a car tonight and not his little scooter.
Clearly I’ve blown it. Now Lufthansa will need to be towed and I won’t even be able to trade it in and I’ve pushed my luck one day too far. Do they still have those billboards for tax breaks on junkers in your front yard? Jump starting my car twice a day was not an embarrassing inconvenience, but a warning shout from the heavens.
The next morning I meet two young tow truck drivers back at the soccer fields. Somehow I’ve evaded the campus police and the Rat Mobile has not been ticketed or towed. Damn. Luis, with a shadow of a mustache, takes a mallet and does some knocking. He pounds a rock out of the left rear wheel. It’s a miracle and a curse. The Rat Mobile lives to gnaw another day.
But now I know my borrowed time has caught up to me. My luck has run out. It’s now or never. The Tooth Fairy brings money and Pokémon that night.
Just another Tuesday.