WHAT I BEEN UP TO

Sometimes I get a little down. I get a little upset that things aren’t quite working out. Last week, my boss at the robot store where I work part-time building toys for birthday parties, told me that I should probably look for other work because the summer wasn’t exactly a high time in the robot-novelty business. As I was riding my bike home, an upscale chauffeur pulled out of a parallel parking job as I was passing, and completely mangled both my bike, and the entire left side of my body. After yelling a few obscenities and limping off to the side of the street, the Michael Clarke Duncan-style driver got out of his car, asked me if I was OK, then pulled me into his chest with the aggressive affection that you would expect from someone like Michael Clarke Duncan.

As he was weeping into my hair, two other witnesses of the event came over to make sure I was alright. After I pulled away from the Green Mile stranglehold of my assailant, these two strangers started making banter as an obvious attempt to consol me after being violently abused by an automobile. I told them I was sorry for yelling obscenities so indiscriminately. The girl said that she was just happy that I was OK, because it looked really bad. The other man said “Yeah, really horrible,” which I thought was weird since he was carrying a white tipped cane. Then, the blind man said, “at least your foot looks okay,” and I began to delve deep into an existential crisis. If blind people actually feel inclined to lie to me out of sympathy, I need to find a new approach to life. I need a life coach.

Two days ago I found one. His name is Michael Bedford, an Australian surfer who, two days ago, saved his own life by punching a shark in the face. He allegedly got knocked off of his board by what was probably a great white shark, dueled with the monster, then punched it twice in the face and caught the next wave to shore. Like me, only to an obviously more sexy and dangerous degree, Michael Bedford was dealt shit cards over the course of a moment. However, instead of embracing a large black man, he punched the dealer twice in the face, stole the cards that he needed for a royal flush, and won. There are clearly two ways to deal with random physical trauma. You can either let your face settle comfortably into a Michael Clarke Duncan look-a-like’s bosom and contemplate whether you should quit your job at the robot store to pursue other interests, or you can punch the nearest aggressor twice in the face and catch the next wave to shore.

Later that week I was riding my bike home from a pleasant Sunday brunch with an old college friend, and a girl clotheslined me with the door of her Honda Civic. As I lay tangled in my bike, bleeding onto the asphalt, I remember thinking to myself, “What the hell is with car owners in this fucking city? I’m getting a settlement out of this one.” but I looked up and the girl was just staring sadly at me from behind her broken door, with a car full of her belongings, clearly hoping to spend her afternoon moving into a new apartment. I simply couldn’t bring myself to punch her or her car twice in the face, so I once again limped off the street, and tried to fix my bike. She wasn’t as eager to give me a coping hug though, so I just made her write me a check for twenty bucks. I win.