A long-winded story about a stick...and my mirage of other people’s perfection

Human creatures are such studies in contradiction. For example, me. When it comes to words, I’m pretty particular. I try very hard not to be a pedantic snob, mind you, but I do notice when people misspeak. And typos pop off the page at me, on everything from church bulletins to The Wall Street Journal (just spotted one yesterday in WSJ). However, when it comes to so many other little things in life, I’m scatterbrained and/or oblivious.

It’s 15 degrees outside. Do I wear mittens? No, because I’m in too much of a hurry to get to work (or wherever I’m going) and because I can’t find a suitable pair in my rush out the door.

Or…

It’s 75 degrees and super-sunny. I am driving Vi to camp, an hour and a half away on winding country roads, Old Sol blazing brightly the whole way there and back. Do I wear sunglasses? No, because I can’t remember where any are and if I stop to purchase a pair at the drug store I’ll be late getting my girl to her summer excursion. Plus, I’d probably promptly misplace them anyway—why waste the money? So, I squint.

Not all my flakiness is weather-related (perhaps if Will were awake while I write this, he could suggest some more examples…although he himself is over-the-top “adaptive” in so many practical matters), but my most recent example also has to do with the elements:

By way of background, you need to know that both of our vehicles, the(typically) Trusty Tercel and the Ford Windbag, have been dead in our driveway for approximately 2 months. Since my dad could not drive for the few weeks following his heart surgery, he insisted we borrow his truck, which we did. And it was working out just fine until recently when Dad could drive again and had appointments to attend.

Now, you also need to know that my father is generosity personified and would willingly carry on loaning us his truck for the foreseeable future. But, of course, we had to do something about our deadbeat automobiles. We had mostly postponed the pain because of tight funds and freezing temperatures. The other night, however, I decided to give the van a go. It’s a persnickety machine, and I thought it possible that, after sitting in stone-cold silence throughout the holiday season, it might just decide to start. I was right. At the first turn of the key, the engine fired up like nothing had been wrong all this time.

So, voila! I got the broom, brushed about four feet of snow off the mean red driving machine, and took it out for a short spin, taking care to back into the driveway so we could more easily jump the stinker if it wouldn’t start again. But, the next morning, it did. And the next, and the next. But yesterday, I got hit with a detail dilemma. I had brushed off the snow with our broom the first night, and the snow the next couple of days was the fluffy sort the wipers could slough off. But Friday’s windshield included a smidgen of ice, and I discovered the Windbag contained no scraper. As usual, I was rushing to get to work, so I made do with a stick that I found next to Ben’s booster seat—an inch-thick, foot-long stick that a boy like Ben can’t resist confiscating from the woods to use as a play weapon. In this case, it armed me against the ice.

The stick substituted as scraper just fine in the a.m., but by late afternoon when I was ready to head home after a tiring first week of the new year, the stick did not suffice. I tried to chip away at the coating on the windshield, but ultimately I had to sit for several minutes with the van’s defrost function on full blast and wait. While I waited, I wondered: How do other people do it? How do they tend to all these little details of life—the mittens, the sunglasses, the scrapers, the facial tissues, the laundry cleaned, sorted, and put away, the home-cooked meals on the table every night of the week? Is my perception of “perfect people” a mirage? Maybe. Probably. I hope so. I don’t know. I just know I’m not one of them. When the ice had half-melted, I hopped out of the van with my stick, poked at the windshield for a few more minutes, turned the windshield wipers on high, and drove home.