I fully recognize that in many ways I don’t seem to have learned to human as well as some of the other humans.
My car is usually a cluttered mess, for example. I never picked up the hair/makeup skill that most women seem to have, nor the inclination to go through all those extra steps on a daily basis. Also, I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never master time management.
Similar to the windmill in Back to the Future III, I have an alarm on my phone in the morning called “point of no return”, at which time, if I haven’t left the house, my choices are to catch a later train, which puts me at work roughly 20 minutes late, or start jogging.
Every morning, as I walk to the train, a little blue and gray Nissan Cube speeds past me, revving its engine and making ‘California stops’ at the stop signs. I eventually figured out that it was the man down the street rushing his wife to the train. It took a while before I managed to observe his wife getting out of the car so I could tell which one she was. Now and then I pick her out at the station, pulling out a hair clip and compact and hastily doing something with still-wet hair.
She’s just like me!
They seem to have figured that out, too. After making his delivery every morning, the husband rolls down his window as he passes me on the return trip. “You okay? Gonna make it this morning?”
“I got this!” I usually yell back.
If they see me jogging, though, they just pull over and throw the doors open. “Need a ride today?” The husband will yell. Then I jump in the back seat of their cluttered car and we rev off to the train station. The wife and I have just enough time to do something with our still-wet hair before the train comes.
Not that I shouldn’t strive to be better, but it’s kind of a relief to know that there are other people out there who function like this. It seems like this couple feels that way too. We have to support each other, us deficient humans.
Laura Writes 