Sometimes it’s Handy

Yesterday I drove to western Massachusetts to retrieve a load of used windows for a top secret project (never fear, all will be revealed in due time).

I saw a hawk crumpled at the side of the interstate, feathers fluttering in the air displaced by the speeding traffic. It looked almost as if it were still trying to fly.

I heard Panama. I heard this one and I wasn’t even sure who it was but I knew all the words. I heard GW Bush talking about what he imagines might have happened if he hadn’t invaded Iraq. I heard the novelist Richard Ford mention that he doesn’t believe in legacies, and after that I listened a little more closely to everything else he had to say. I heard that someone landed a rocket on a comet and about everything that would be learned and I thought that sometimes it’s better not knowing.

I learned that the fellow I bought the windows from is a contractor and that on average, his clients spend $90,000 on windows alone. I didn’t know what to say about that. I told him about our project, and what our budget was, and he gave me two real nice doors for free.

I saw an old stone wall, all round field stones, thousands upon thousands of them, running unbroken through the forest until it reached the mown buffer at the interstate’s edge. I realized I was doing 74 mph across someone’s former pasture. I slowed down for a while, but then sped up again.

I fit five windows in the back of the Subaru, but I had to slide my seat forward so that I drove the whole way home hunched over the steering wheel. I put the doors and two more huge windows on top and by now the ‘ru was riding real low and people looked at me funny and maybe a little worriedly as they passed.

I remembered the time Penny and I took a pre-kids bike camping trip to the island of Tobago and a car came by and it was dragging a long board. I mean, they’d actually tied a rope around the bumper of the car and were literally dragging the board home. There were two men in the car and they laughed and waved as they passed, the board bouncing and scraping behind them. Penny took a picture. We still have it somewhere.

I had to pee real bad and I didn’t want to stop, so I pissed in my empty coffee cup as I drove, then stuck it back in the cup holder. I reminded myself to not sip absentmindedly.

Sometimes it’s handy being a guy.

PS: For those who interpreted my comments in Tuesday’s post about my parents not teaching me anything or worse yet not supporting me as being literal, a brief clarification. My parents are really friggin’ great. And incredibly supportive. However, I stand by my primary point, which is that the big lessons in life – the ones we remember decades later, the ones that shape and sometimes shatter our world view – often come from unexpected places.