Murphy's Law

Thursday night

Two friends were arriving from India, and would be staying with us for awhile. When they got here they surprised me by saying that they didn't have enough money to afford food. I said, "Don't worry -- while you're here, we'll pay for your meals."
I had a white collar job at a large company, but my bosses were making me do things that were not in my job description. One day they said, "We just got a truck in downstairs, and we want you to go help unload it." I said, "I've had a hernia. I don't want to get another one." I went down to the warehouse and repeated my story to the foreman. He said, "Then you can offload these crates of soda [in 64 oz. bottles]." These were large plastic pallets with holes in them, to hold about about 30 bottles each. I had to stack them in the corner, and they were teriffically heavy.
Later, my wife and I headed to the airport to take a trip, and she was the first to go through security. She was chosen for extra security screening while I waited to go next. She was saying something like, "They want to know why I don't have any keys. Have you got the key?" I said, "Hang on. I'm having trouble understanding you. Can you wait a minute [for me to get there]?" Apparently, she couldn't. The screeners let her pass, but she didn't wait for me; she grabbed her suitcases and walked off in a huff, around the corner and into the terminal.
A few days after that episode I had gone to an ATM machine and taken out $300 cash; I went to an electronics store to buy some DVDs. I'd made some selections, but then, for some reason, the store clerk and I were sitting in my car, out in front of the store. (I was behind the wheel, and he was sitting in the right front passenger seat. He was holding my wallet.) I asked the clerk to total up the cost of my purchase. One of the items in the pile was a computer game; I was shocked to find out that it cost $130, and was thinking about putting that one back. To my chagrin, when I wasn't looking, the clerk opened my wallet and found an old combination AmEx/Circuit City card. He said, "I haven't seen one of these in ages!" and before I could do anything, he ran it through his portable card reader. He'd rung up the entire sale before I could even protest. I stammered, "Why did you do that?! You knew I'd taken out $300 in cash!" (I was particularly stressed about it because my wife and I had been trying to pay the credit cards down, not run them up.) The cashier apologized and tried to void the sale as I circled around the parking lot, frowning.

*****

I probably dreamed about the two Indian guys because my wife was trying to talk me into seeing the new "Harold and Kumar" movie. I'd never seen the first one. Later I found out that only one of the characters (Kumar) is of Indian descent.

Someone at work asked me to lift something very heavy the other day, and I mentioned that I'd had a hernia, and didn't want to have another one. (Of course, I eneded up lifting the boxes onto a cart.)

My wife and I are working hard to pay off our credit cards, and it looks like we'll succeed by early summer.

I'm constantly rushed by everyone. In my heart of hearts I'm a slow-moving, contemplative person, forced to live in a world moving at break-neck speed. I can't stand it. No wonder I prefer to read about the past.