Gray Day

It was a gray day. It was the kind of day that Lorenzo De St. Germain auf Flugelhorn used as a model when he invented the color gray in 1835 (he later invented grey for Britain, Australia and Canada). I had just parked my car at work, gotten out to take the “walk of not exactly death but certainly not joy sort of like blah blah blah” into the building when I noticed one of my tires was flat. Flat as a pita pocket. Flatter than my singing voice. As flat as Wile E. Coyote when he’s run over by his own road grader that he bought from the Acme Company. My tire was so flat members of the Flat Earth Society had gathered around it for their monthly meeting. One of them handed me a corn muffin during the president’s opening remarks.

I went to my desk and fumed. Why God? Why did you let this happen to me on this day of all days: Monday February 4, 2013, a day that has absolutely no special meaning to me whatsoever. Why? With no answer forthcoming I started working, but with every request I filled or question I answered I felt more and more empty inside. Just as my tire was devoid of air, I was lacking the will to work.

On my lunch break, 30 minutes that I usually use to write strongly worded letters to the editor of Dishtowel Quarterly (Really? Green is the color of the year for dish rags and tea towels? I think not), I instead was forced to go outside in the Arctic temperature of 26 degrees and change my tire. With my fingers turning black from hypothermia and the air blue from my swearing I got my spare tire on. And when I lowered the car back down to the ground . . . it was flat as well.

Good one God. Pure comedy gold.

Annnnyyyyyway, I went back inside to call my sister to see if she could bring her air pump out and get the spare filled enough so I could drive home. I tapped the number into my cell phone  . . . and it had been deactivated.

Oh, I get it. I’m still asleep and having a dream. I went along with it and danced in my cubicle to a medley of Bee Gees songs then slammed my hand in my filing cabinet drawer.

After bandaging my hand and signing the paperwork for my written warning about playing disco music in a confined space I called my sister from my work phone. With the remaining minutes of my lunch break I went online to reactivate my cell phone and for the first time all day something went well. A few clicks of the mouse and I had my service back. Shortly after that my sister called. She had gotten my spare tire filled enough that the car was drivable.

It was still a gray day, like a concrete slab had been poured into the sky by travelers who took our money and never came back to finish the work. But I wouldn’t be stranded and forced to sleep under my desk with cheese doodle crumbs and pebbles that get caught in the sole of my shoe. My phone worked again . . . now that I didn’t need it.

Yes, it all turned out ok. Of course, I had to spend over $20 to put time on my Tracphone to get it reactivated and then today another $16 to get the tire plugged. Hmm.

It was a black day. The kind of day that St. Cuthbert of Ufnagel om Doom used as a model when he invented the color black in the 4^th century . . .