Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Once Around the Park



Philip hated cars. At least right now he did. To be totally accurate, Philip hated this particular Toyota Corolla, at this particular moment. But his hate was so mighty and so complete that it could easily cover many more cars, if called on to do so.

With this thought, Phil once again wound himself into a tight, tense tornado shape and violently shook every part of his five foot ten-inch frame, fists clenched, head twisting, while he shouted some nonsense curses that phonetically fit his situation. He stopped almost immediately because it made him so dizzy he had to grab the side of the car to stay upright.

Dammit. He shouldn't have done that. Now he was starting to get a headache. He squeezed his eyes shut and hung his head in hopeless shame. Why? Why? Why? Why was this happening to him?  He was standing on a dirt road next to a dead car, miles from where he needed to be with no phone, and no talents or knowledge, as far as he could tell, that might get him out of this "dirt road hell."

Once again, He looked up the road to the east and then down the road to the west hoping -- no praying -- to see some sign of an approaching car. A distant dust trail, a glint of chrome through the shimmering heat rising from the gray dirt road. Nothing. No sign. He should put his ear to the ground to listen for cars, or trains, or buffalo. Tatanka! Right, maybe he should set the car on fire in hopes of attracting attention or showing up on Landsat or some predator drone somewhere. He had no matches or lighter.

Phil was supposed to be walking into a job interview in Wilsonville in about 15 minutes. The venue for that interview was Fullbore Systems, Inc. a digital design startup company that was not only catching some good-sized contracts for Computer Graphics or “CG” work in movie production, but also willing to hire coders with little background in CG, like Phil. The fact that Fullbore was in Wilsonville, and not 1200 miles away in southern California, was nothing less than a miraculous alignment of circumstances and this car, this little pus-filled piece of shit, was dismembering this opportunity right in front of him and then pretending to be a simple inanimate object.

With his eyes closed, he could see his future change color and slowly circle the drain. Where was his phone? Good question. It was at home, safe and sound. His almost-new iPhone 6s was fully charged and sitting on the kitchen counter next to his commuter cup of coffee that he'd forgotten as well. It had all seemed so promising last night. Last night!

He stayed up a little too long, on the web, reading about some of the software Fullbore might be using. Just to get a little conversant, a bit more prepared for the interview. But he'd lost track of time and suddenly it was past midnight, so he rushed to get to sleep which, of course, left him just lying there, cursing. To make it worse, he'd hit the snooze button twice this morning, he'd had a good reason at the time, but now it just sounded insane. He'd gotten the coffee started and taken a shower, slammed a PopTart and headed for the door, 30 minutes later than he'd planned.

He was five miles down Highway 10 when he realized that he'd left his phone and coffee at home. He obviously couldn't go back.

“Oh well,” he'd said. “Oh well.” He thought maybe he'd get that tattooed on his forehead, Oh Well!

It was "normally" 35 miles to Wilsonville from his house but, being a natural born world-class cartographer and navigator , Phil felt confident he could cut at least seven miles off the trip by getting off the highway and taking some random back roads. He took an exit and a couple turns that he felt sure were in the right direction and quickly found himself on this dirt road. This dirt road.

Well done! Really, very well done. He congratulated himself. He was, now, no longer interviewing for a dream job that might set him up for life, but instead he was approaching the half-way point in the story "Deliverance." Phil promised himself that if this fiasco continued along that scenario, he would not struggle during the assault but, instead, he'd embrace the consequences that nature had in store and possibly join whatever savage, troglodytic tribe that had their way with him.

He reflected on that moment, 25 minutes before, when his car had gone from a smoothly running motorized vehicle, to a powerless hulk hurtling along without steering and precious little breaking and finally rolling to a stop as far to the right as it could, without being pulled into the certain death of the weedy ditch which ran beside the road.

He had immediately gotten out of the car and popped the hood in some vain hope that the problem would be so obvious, that a person could fix it who knew nothing more about cars than to take them to Jiffy-Lube when the sticker said to, something so screamingly obvious that the word obvious no longer even applied, some kind of simple car problem that appeared with its own easy-to-follow instructions, because it was that stinking obvious.

Nope, it wasn't that. The only thing he could tell was that it wasn't running and the engine was still very, very hot, if you were stupid enough to touch it. He then got the owner's manual out of the glovebox and looked through it. Since this was the first he'd seen of it, he learned several interesting things, but not why his car didn't work. He even pulled the AAA card out of his wallet and stared at it for a couple minutes to see if that helped. Nope.

It was now 8:22 AM and he didn't know precisely where he was on a county map, if he'd had one, which he didn't. Phil tried to remember if he’d passed a house recently, but he hadn't been looking for houses. It was unlikely that he would make it to Fullbore in the next -- eight minutes or even be able to call to let them know of his trouble. For now, he was left leaning against the Corolla, praying that there would be some natural disaster at or near Fullbore that would cause an evacuation or power outage.

It finally occurred to Phil that he'd taken this drama as far as he could for now. He felt emotionally drained. He could think of no self-destructive act that would make anything better, so he left the hood up, turned on his flashers, crawled into the driver's seat and leaned it way, way back. He closed his eyes and thought that if he lived through this, he just might want to check out some Youtube videos on car situations like this in case he ever had a chance at a job again, ever, really ever. That was probably a good idea.

He thought about jobs he'd had before he went to the community college. As he drifted off, he thought that maybe, just maybe, he could get hired at the Redi-Mix plant.

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