Tandem Troubles

Sometimes trouble just finds you regardless of how hard you try to avoid it. It's like dank, oppressive humidity, enveloping and suffocating you after you smile at the sunshine on a lovely day. It hits out of nowhere and leaves you splayed on the sidewalk, gasping with heat stroke like a hooked trout in the day's fresh catch basket.

Trouble. I needed it yesterday as much as I needed a plume of tobacco smoke blown in my face from some sucker puffing on a cancer stick. I needed it like appendicitis. Heck, I needed it like a cliche punch in the face! But despite my plans for a quiet day at the library, I found myself faced with a face-smashing bowl of trouble.

It all started when a late night turned into an early weekend morning with a sore throat that could only have been sent by someone as sinister as Shakespear's Iago. Clawing my throat out would have seemed like a mere insect bite in comparison to the endless flaming pain of this latest enemy of my immune system. Yet I tried desperately to ignore it, to pretend it was a slight case of "dehydration" or "seasonal allergies" even though I've never experienced an allergic reaction in my life. I tried to tell myself that dreaded librarians don't get sick-- they just don't. But on those little bacteria marched, destroying my throat, progressing to my lungs within 24 hours, and leaving me coughing until my ribs ached.

Now, any normal person would probably stay home and just wait it out. However, my work ethic is like an iron bar, and the only reason I could legitimize for taking a sick day was that I didn't want to infect others with this bacterial culture brewing in the petri dishes of my inflamed alveoli. I did contemplate staying home sick, but since it is school vacation week and I knew that I would be spending the entirety of the day behind a closed door in the privacy of my office with limited exposure to other individuals, I decided to muck through some paperwork and catch up on all the office duties I've been so negligent about. Thus, my troubles began.

After a few hours, I left my office to meet a friend for lunch. We were to meet at 1:15 at the Indian restaurant down the street, but as I was leaving my office at 1:12 I realized with mortification that I had forgotten my debit card in the pocket of my other pair of pants (where I had tucked it the night before while attending an Iron & Wine concert), and living up to my notorious habit of never having cash on hand, I was faced with a dilemma: I could either go to the restaurant and be on time, but ashamedly ask my friend to cover my lunch with a promised I-owe-you, or I could run back to my apartment to get my debit card to relieve myself from being a mooch, but continue to develop a bad habit of being late. I opted for the latter and started running up the street.

I arrived at my apartment at approximately 1:15, found the card within thirty seconds, and was dashing out the door by 1:16, at which point I spotted by bicycle waiting, beckoning for me on the landing outside the door. Without a second thought, I threw it over my shoulder and carried it out the door where I proceeded to hop onto it and speed towards the Indian restaurant. I arrived barely three minutes late, praising myself for being smart enough to avoid being a mooch or being terribly tardy. I placed by bike against a tree by the side window of the restaurant and then BAM! I realized with horror that I had forgotten my bike lock. But again, the desire to save my reputation outweighed my thoughts of returning home to retrieve my bike lock, and I thought to myself, "Well, we won't be inside long, and my bike will be in full view of our table the whole time. I'm sure it will be fine." I'm sure you see where this is going. Obviously my bike got stolen and my reputation became that of a careless dolt, which is far worse than that of being a tardy mooch. Thus, my tandem troubles of horrendous illness and bike theft rolled together into one of the worst days of the past year.

I'm fairly convinced that I won't see my lavender road bike (named Luna Pisces Moonbeam) again, unless the dreaded librarian rears her crime-fighting head once more in a serious case of revenge-seeking investigative work. Firstly, she must wait in frustration for this cold to leave her lungs, and then...

Luna Pisces Moonbeam

TO BE CONTINUED...