Perhaps it’s genetic, like my tendency to lose my glasses, which I inherited from my mother and grandmother. Maybe we Trawick women have our own electro-magnetic fields. If so, mine is just this side of making clocks run backwards.
Here’s what life has been like for the last little while. It all started when I drove to Athens and the car overheated because it had a broken hose. I crept home at 25 miles per hour, got it fixed, and drove it to Athens again. What was I thinking? This time the engine light came on because there was something wrong with my emission control system. (Not that I could tell what that funny little light was. How was I supposed to know what a car engine looks like in profile? On my dashboard it looks rather like an accordion.)
Inbetween visits to the car-repair shop, I managed — as you know — to get stung by eight yellow jackets (well, it’s nine now, actually). I also hurt my back trying to pick up something best left to weightlifters. Awake one night at 2 a.m., unable to sleep because of the back pain, I decided to adjust my “number bed” and make it more comfortable. Suddenly I was sinking. Now I really couldn’t sleep, and it was only with some effort that I could climb up out of the bed.
I looked in my owner’s manual to see whether I could call the manufacturer. But 24-hour help lines have gone the way of the dodo and are now extinct. Happily, the bed is under warranty, and a new pump is on the way. Unhappily, I was foolish enough to load my parents’ dishwasher the very next day and turn it on — and the dishwasher pump broke! Alas, it is not fixable, so a new dishwasher must be purchased.
I went to work Monday morning with some trepidation, reluctant to touch even the door. I was thinking of my condition as something like being accident-prone, and wondering when family and friends would start calling me Destruct-O. Perhaps I’d become one of those people in the movies — the ones who start fires just by thinking about them.
And sure enough, our library computers went haywire, not just in Commerce but all over the state. Any minute now I’ll be quarantined, perhaps tested. If you don’t see me, it’s because I’ve gone into hiding. But my electric toothbrush still works. Don’t you think that’s a hopeful sign?
Susan Harper is director of the Commerce Public Library. She lives in Commerce.
