Sometimes all you want to do is just simply get home…leave work, get in the car and drive, windows rolled up, A/C on, tunes playin’ on the radio…your own little living room on wheels transporting you to your big living room with a roof and a mortgage. This was a Monday all day long and my brain died while I was still trying to use it …so, I really didn’t need to stop at the grocery store on my way home….and if it wasn’t for that Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia I wouldn’t have…ah, yes, the ice cream…I’ll get to eatin’ that later, but first this thought is buzzin’ around in my head!
I get through the market almost unbruised…well, except for the kid in the grocery cart who thought it would be funny to stick his foot out in front of my cart as I went by, kicking me in the elbow, then me holding my funny bone (?) stopped to say something sweet to the kid and he began to cough God-knows-what all over me…maybe that’s why he stuck his foot out, he needed a target. So, now I’m on the home stretch and proceeding with caution to the self-checkout aisle where I’m convinced there must be a film crew up in the ceiling taking video to play later on The World’s Funniest Grocery Store Checkout Videos. How can those things possibly save anyone any time?…. I only go there to keep from interacting with a cashier that ignores me and a bagger who puts my watermelon on top of my $3.99/lb. tomatoes on the vine, but NO, the stupid checkout machine won’t leave me alone, it doesn’t let me put my groceries where I want to, sensing that I may be stealing something and tells me to wait for an attendant…but I NEED my ice cream so I hang in there, knowing that I’m only moments away from my car and I’ll soon be back home, if all goes well.
OK! Great!…I’m heading for the car and there’s a woman parked next to me loading her groceries into the back of her pumpkin orange Saturn SUV. She finishes, hops in her car and proceeds with caution to back out of her parking space…just then and from out of nowhere walks a woman directly behind the SUV while it’s in reverse…all I could say was NOOOOOOO, like in slow motion, I could just imagine her hitting the pavement and I was already thinking 911 in that split second…the SUV missed her by 1 millimeter, no more no less…it only took me a second to spurt out “YOU WERE ALMOST HIT BY THAT CAR!!!!” and she just looked at me and kept walking past and into the sunset not seeming to care that those steps behind that car might have been her last…she had no reaction and almost seemed mad that I interrupted her train of thought, well her train was almost de-railed!
Now, I’m in my car, trying to calm down from that near miss, I pull out of the parking lot onto the street and notice that a big green bug, a cicada, I believe, had attached himself to my side view mirror on the mirror side. At first I thought he would fly off if I slowed down…I knew that if I opened my window to shoo him off he would most likely fly into my car. So, my only choice was to drive…30, 35,….40…45 mph and he’s still hanging on! The longer he hung on, the more compassion I felt for him…we were bonding perhaps…well, not exactly…I just admired his chutzpuh, he was hanging on for dear life! Could it be that the bug had more of a survival instinct, appreciation for my efforts to save its life, than the woman behind the car in the parking lot? I’m rounding the corner now on the home stretch and 100 yards from my driveway…yes, he’s still there..Well, I’ll go inside and check on him later…he’ll be gone. A couple of hours pass and, hmmm, he’s STILL there, and it struck me…he was seeing his image in the mirror, probably thinking to himself, “hey, you look maw-val-ous daw-ling, simply maw-val-ous!” ..afterall, it is the height of the summer when all the bugs are lookin’ for love, not only the love-bugs. I guess he realized that he found a beauty and he wasn’t about to let her go now when he could see his unborn children in her eyes!
My mama always told me that there’s a lesson in everything we experience, but I do declare, I learn more from the animal kingdom than all that book learnin’ they teach in school. This bug was testimony to that which has been buzzin’ round in my head for the past 3 years (30 days at a time…), if you find that special someone whose mere reflection sets your heart on fire and makes you want to hang on for dear life, go with it, you never know where love will take you!
No comments:
Post a Comment