Last night at about 11:30 PM Amy (my wife) asked me to go to
the store and pick up some medicine for Abby (my daughter). She is
teething and was having a hard time sleeping. I got down to the
kitchen and realized that I had not hung up my keys where they go, and instead of
going back upstairs to get them, I grabbed the spare set hanging on the key
rack. Back at the truck after buying the Children’s Tylenol,
I inserted the key into the door to unlock it. Usually I click the button
on the little fob, but the spare key doesn’t have one. As I
twisted the key in the lock I set off the car alarm. The only way I
know to turn off the alarm is to push the unlock button on the fob. But
the fob was at home. I frantically tried everything I could
think of, I looked for the fuse to the horn in the fuse case, I pushed every
switch, and I tried to start the car. Nothing would work. As
I was looking a second time at the lid to the fuse case, trying to find a fuse
I could pull, a flashlight shown on me. Turning around I noticed one of
Gilbert’s finest standing a few feet away, one hand resting on his
holstered pistol, the other holding a flashlight. I asked him if he
had any ideas how to turn off the car alarm. He paused for a long
couple of seconds, probably deciding if I was a stupid thief or a clueless Nissan
owner. Finally he said “No”. After watching
me for a long 2-3 minutes I explained to him that I only knew how to turn it
off with the fob thing, but that it was at home. He took my license and
registration to make sure it really was my truck and then offered me a ride
home. The back seat of a police car is never a comfortable place to
be. But the officer was nice. He even offered to handcuff me and
then knock on the door and tell my wife that I had been arrested. I
declined that offer; it was enough humiliation to have been sitting for 10
minutes in a car that won’t stop honking in the middle of a parking lot
in the middle of the night. He gave me a ride back to the store and
I finally was able to start my truck and go home.
Fast-forward ten hours to this morning. I am in
a good mood, scanning the channels to catch the latest indictment news from Washington, racing down the freeway with the windows
down, and enjoying the perfect Arizona
weather. As I near my exit (3Rd
Street HOV exit on I-10) I switch to the oldies
station which was playing “Age of Destruction” by Barry McGuire .
I instantly started singing along. Now this song is not something for the gentle
singing. It is a song of anger and protest. The only way I know to
sing along to this song is a full on, take this protest scream.
Racing up the off ramp, windows down I stop at the light at the end of the
ramp.
My turn is to the right. I am still singing as I look
to the left to see if I can turn. Right as I do so I am singing “Think
of all the hate there is in Red China, then look around to Selma Alabama”.
At about “Selma”
I realize that there is this woman in the lane next to me on a big
Harley-Davidson motorcycle, wearing a white shirt, blue jeans and strawberry
blonde hair coming out from beneath her helmet. This mental image I have
of her will be in my mind for a long time. She is looking right at me and
laughing and shaking her head as if to say “This is the most pathetic
sight I have seen in a long time”. I give her a sheepish nod,
certainly turning bright red and racing away as quickly as possible. The
last words of the song that I heard before switching to NPR were “The
pride and disgrace”…….