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May 8, 2001
Cursed
For a long time I felt cursed. Bad things often happened to me in great quantity. For example:
Last year we were going to go to Burning Man. We had bought the tickets and began preparing. We have a smallish car (Volkswagon Golf) and we thought it would be a good idea to figure a way to add more storage so that we could take the necessities along to the desert. So we bought a Thule rack - a car-top rack that would hold the bikes, as well as a luggage compartment. This would effectively increase our capacity by a large degree. A good idea, a good investment.
SO a few days before I mounted the rack on top of the car - no small feat. It took a few hours, and once it was mounted I decided it would be a good idea to put the bikes on the car and lock them up. Remember this part.
I also packed some of the various gear in the car and the next morning I headed off to the city to pick to go to work for a few hours before we departed. I need to run an errand while at work, so I went to the car and headed over to Valencia Street to pick up some bike parts. It was an easy errand at 10 a.m. on a Thursday. It took about a half-hour, and then I headed back to the office on Potrerro Hill and parked in my usual spot.
I was chatting with a coworker in the office not a minute later when I heard my car alarm go off. I thought someone had bumped the car while parallel parking - an occurrence that happens often in the tight parking along side the building. I took off running to check out the situation, through the building, through the side door in time to see a man with his arm inside my car. He was opening the door.
I caught him off guard and he went running toward a SUV, jumped in the back door, and the truck was gone. I headed over to my car to check out the damage, and noticed that the guy had taken a hammer to the side of the car, hitting it repeatedly to try to hit the window - his aim was off a bit. He eventually made contact and broke the window. From the damage I saw I figured he reached into the window and opened the car door. Apparently, that's when I arrived. He had pulled his arm out of the window so quickly that he put an enormous slice down his arm, allowing him to bleed copiously throughout the entire interior of the car.
I look around and noticed his hammer lying at the side of the car in a pool of blood and a mound of broken glass. I immediately pulled out my cell phone and called the police, then called my office mates inside to ask them to ring me a phone book so that I could try to find a glass repair shop.
The police arrived, and pretty much told me that even though I had the license plate number and we had finger prints and blood that they would/could do nothing. It seems that they have better things to do.
The police left and I started to try to find a glass repair shop. No one in The City proper had the glass, and if they could order it - and this was unlikely Ðit would likely take approximately five days. I called Jenny in a funk, and headed home over the bridge.
When I got home, I called a few more glass places in the East Bay, and found one that could help me, but it would take them about four hours. So I optimistically jumped in the car and headed over to the repair shop. When I arrived, they confirmed that they, indeed, did have the glass and they could start immediately. I drove the car through a side door at the facility, and parked it in a repair slot and commenced my waiting in the television room.
I used this time to talk with Jenny via cell, and we altered our plans to get stuff straight and continue to prepare for our trip to the desert.
A few hours later they called me on the intercom to tell me the car was ready. I headed over, inspected the lackluster job (I was going to get the door repaired later, and the other hammer induced damage at a more reputable body shop), and paid my dues.
I asked which way they wanted me to drive out, and they waved me out the front door. The turn looked tight, but the Golf is small, so I drove off in that direction. As I was passing through the door I heard a terrible crunching nice - one that shook the whole car and brought it to a halt. Remember those bikes on the top of the car?
The door I had been waived through was about six inches lower than the clearance I needed to pass through, and the bikes, bike rack and luggage rack were torn violently off the top of the car, ripping large gouges down the sides of the doors.
At this point I began to have a minor nervous breakdown. I called Jenny and asked her to bring our little truck so that we might pack up the carnage and head home. I was shaking all over from the embarassment, the anger and the adrenaline, and my voice was shaking.
I moved the car as far as I could and began dismantling the racks and bikes. Jenny showed up a few minutes later and she helped me load the truck. I couldn't speak, and Jenny dared not try to get me to talk.
We headed home in separate cars and when we arrived I began to unload the car, figuring at this time there was no way we were going to go to Burning Man, figuring that we had already outlayed a huge amount of money, and we weren't, as far as I was concerned, going to spend any more money. I was cursed, and this was a sign that the next step in my cursed life was going to be hugely costly either in life or money. I knew my limits.
As I Was unloading the car, I reached in and grabbed a jug of water to move to our back yard, at which point I slice my thumb on some of the broken window glass that was laying around the car. I began to bleed, but again, I was so angry I couldnÕt stop. I continued to unload the car, bleeding all over everything I touched until all that remained in the car was a watermelon.
I looked at the watermelon, looked at it hard, picked it up and smashed it on the sidewalk. I needed to hurt something, and the watermelon seemed like a good idea. Watermelon smashed, hand covered in blood I headed in the house, took off most of my clothes and crawled into bed.
Jenny came in and consoled me a bit, calmed me down and told me we should take it easy for a while before we decide what we're going to do next. Jenny ever calm to my impetuous, angered, cursed self.
We took a nap, had some lovinÕ, and we got up refreshed and began again from scratch. Jenny said "Even if you are cursed, which I donÕt think you are, I still love you." And with that, we rented a truck, picked it up, packed and headed off to Burning Man for a great experience.
So. Cursed. Yes? No? After a few years of feeling cursed, I feel like the spell has lifted. What could it be? Perhaps Jenny and I have moved to a more mature place in our relationship? Perhaps the fact that I have actually been sleeping again after 10 years of fitful, restless sleep? Or is it the fact that I have come to doubt my own self-casting as a cursed person? Self-fulfilling prophecy? I don't know.
Are you cursed?
Posted by tdotjay at May 8, 2001 11:30 AM
