Some days just don’t go right. I woke up today and my alarm clock had broken in the night. I checked my wristwatch and saw I was an hour late for work. I jumped out of bed, showered at warp speed, shaved so fast I nearly cut myself, dressed as quickly as I could, and called my boss, Hilda, an annoying person to work for.
”You better get your ass in here now!” she said and hung up the phone.
A little pissed from similar abuses by Hilda in the past but more concerned by the face loss of being late, I flew out of my house and dove into my ancient Volkswagen Beetle, a holdover from my free spirit days. I cranked the Beetle on. It shook, sputtered, and coughed. Dark smoke bombed out of the exhaust. Then it made a sound like a death rattle, shook a little, and died. I wondered if that was its last gasp because of how old it was and the repairs it needed.
I called Hilda again to explain to her that my car had died and I was going to call a cab to still get to work.
“Can’t you do anything right?” She yelled. Tired of her abuse, I blew up.
“Screw you, Hilda!” I yelled so loud that my next-door neighbor peered out her window and looked at me like she was looking at a raging lunatic.
“Screw you too, and you’re fired!” Hilda said and hung up.
With that glorious weight off your shoulders feeling, I strolled into my house and at peace for the first time since I started working for Hilda. I retrieved some Moose Tracks ice cream from my refrigerator and sat down in my plush easy chair. I turned on my TV and watched a sci-fi movie about an eccentric young guy from Erie, Pennsylvania, who willingly got abducted by aliens and volunteered to live on their distant planet to escape the insanity of the human race only to be served on the alien planet as a rare, tasty delicacy.
When the movie ended with the human screaming as the aliens ravenously feasted on him, I heard the mailman arrive in his mail truck and drop off some mail. I marched out to the mailbox to see if I got anything besides bills and those unending advertisements that I received almost daily. I saw a letter in a pink envelope. It was from my girlfriend, Rhonda. I wondered why she sent me a letter instead of phoning or emailing me. Who sends letters nowadays? And why a pink envelope?
She wrote she was leaving me. To make that bad news even more disturbing, she said she had fallen in love with Hilda’s brother, a jerk with shifty eyes and a grating attitude. I felt like punching the hell out of the mailbox, but I let that thought go. No sense in beating up a mailbox over the loss of Rhonda. I didn’t need her around anyway. The relationship had nosedived, and I was tired of listening to her complain about me not making enough money, which told me what she saw in Hilda’s brother who had recently won a million dollars in a lottery. She’ll go through that quickly I mused, and it will serve Hilda’s brother right. Good riddance to Rhonda and good riddance to Hilda the Annoying.
Relieved that ill fated day was over, I went to bed hoping to enjoy a restful sleep and maybe some sweet dreams of hot women to take the sting off my debacle of a day. Just as I began to fall asleep, the ground beneath my house started to crumble. I charged out of my house seconds before it plunged into a sinkhole. I thought to myself, maybe tomorrow will be a better day.
Bob Boyd