So, today, I awoke, immediately turned 27 (I always set the birthday alarm for the birth minute, if I don’t have somewhere else to be at 11:21AM), and rolled back over to try to avoid reality.
I woke up for real about 10 minutes later, after the nagging fact that I had stuff to do. Where to begin? Should I begin with the tale of how, a week and a half ago, my car broke down on the trip to North Carolina via DC? Or perhaps the fact that the hotel I stayed in after getting towed was robbed? Ah, but these are petty details, the real story of my “vacation” begins with my return trip.
I left the beach at 6pm, hoping to make it north of Washington before getting a hotel room for the night. My car had been in Maryland for a week, ideally being fixed and generally blending in with a creepy backwoods mechanic that looked a bit like the front lawn from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The withered husks of automobiles lined up like bodies being counted after a natural disaster…
I got there, greeted the toothless pair smoking cigarettes outside, and transferred my belongings from my rental car to my car after getting the keys. I drove the ten miles across the Delaware border to Enterprise, where I signed paperwork and was given a ride back down to Maryland to the aforementioned vehicular charnel house. I got my keys, payed the fee, and hopped in my beat up Honda, in hopes of a speedy return home.
Just after crossing into New Jersey (read: an hour or so into the drive) the problems began anew as my car slipped gears and ground to a halt 20 oh-so-inconvenient miles into the New Jersey Turnpike. I called my family to let them know it had “happened again” and then set about getting a tow. The tow truck driver was none too friendly and I rode in silence, contemplating another night in a crap motel on the cusp of I-95. I was spared that when they told me I needed a new transmission and it would take a while, but I was cheerfully relieved of $1400 the next minute. After organizing another rental car, I was off. At least this time it was one more fitting my size.
Today, on the 27th anniversary of my birth, I got the dubious gift of driving straight down to just outside Camden (they made it clear that I was not IN Camden, as though that would be some sort of death sentence) to retrieve my car. I left at 12:30PM after much trouble getting started, and arrived just after 5:30. A few moments spent finalizing fund transfers and warranty information, and I was free to leave. Enterprise even agreed to simply pick the car up from the mechanic the next day, clearing me of any obligation I might have with them otherwise.
I drove back and got stuck in traffic, embroiled in inner conflicts with my road rage, which I let out by bellowing, much to the amusement of my friend Owen, who had come along for the ride. I also wrote a charming song about how Owen had paid an elderly Chinese man to perform unspeakable acts for his pleasure. I don’t believe this to be true, but it bears mentioning.
As I ate my birthday dinner at an Arby’s somewhere between there and here, I thought myself one simple thing, so eloquently put my Danny Glover in Lethal Weapons 1-4. I’m getting too old for this shit.
Not in the sense that I was near death or too weak to endure such trials, which are sure to happen to anyone who makes the mistake of trusting their transportation to backwoods hillbillies. More in the sense that I need to turn over a new leaf, stop feeling like such a trainwreck of a human being and possibly do some bootstrap pulling. I’m off to another country for three months in about three weeks, and possibly this will help. If it doesn’t, I’m white and upper middle class, so I suppose its grad school for me. Or buckling down and committing to an ultimately unsatisfying life of faceless, meaningless salaried pay.
I feel I should just end this now with an adapted quote from TS Eliot, who I feel (had he been in my position) might have adapted itself. This is how the prolonged adolescence of an American smartass ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Not that it’s all bad. I just need to find a third path. One that doesn’t leave me overeducated and underskilled, OR overworked and underappreciated. The key in a “career,” much as in anything else, is splitting the difference. The happy medium. Baby bear.
That’s all I got, folks. Thanks to all who wished me well on this, the day of my birth, and here’s to making this the best year yet.
RJC
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