Month: January 2019

On Driving with an Affliction

Driving is not difficult for me. But due to an affliction I find it difficult to get out of my car, and to stand up and walk once I am out. That is why I sport a blue placard on my rearview mirror. It allows me to park in a spot where I can open the door wide and swing my stiff legs out. Parking close to my destination also helps as I stalk ahead like a man on stilts.

All this sounds good and simple. But there are complications. I am not the only handicapped one in town. There are at least four others that buy their groceries in the same supermarket where I shop, and all four shop at the same time and occupy the four available slots. It does not matter what time I arrive: my four nemesises are at their stations. They are a well-organized team, probably retired marines that know how to synchronize watches. It is possible that they are not always the same four people. They may come in sets of four, many such sets. This may explain why I never get a chance.

So far my placard has been merely an embellishment. The blue color goes well with my car’s white exterior.  One day when I have more time I shall cruise as long as it takes. At least one of them, I figure, must eventually finish his grocery shopping trip and come out. But then, he will probably just put his shopping bags in the trunk, leave the car where it is, and proceed to the pharmacy, and after that to the bank. And then, having reloaded his wallet, he will probably walk over to the hardware store. It could take me a long time to inherit his parking space.

Yesterday I had some business at the hospital. The hospital complex has hundreds of parking slots. They are all narrow, unsuitable for me, and they were, I swear, all occupied anyway. No sweat, I thought. This is a hospital where nothing but sick people go in and out. They must be prepared for this and have rows upon rows of “handicapped only” parking spaces. And I was right. They do. But guess what? Not a single open one for me. Cruising around, I finally located a parking lot for doctors only. There was one blue space left and I took it. I remembered that I was told that I could park in any such space, no matter where. And I figured that doctors, if attacked by a crippling affliction, would cure themselves anyway. They would not need my purloined slot.

Obviously a solution for the blue placard parking problem is needed. I suggest a generous reward program. “If you relinquish this parking space within twenty minutes,” the sign at the drug store for example might say, “you are eligible for a free enema. Apply within.”

Schadenfreude

Humor takes many shapes. If it bends, says Woody Allen, it’s funny; if it breaks, it’s not. We were students enrolled in English Literature. One day a farmer stopped by, soliciting orders for his fine clover honey. Our fellow student Ann ordered a gallon. The man delivered it the next day, in a plastic container. She paid the man and he left. Ann picked up the container. The container slipped out of her hands, fell to the floor, broke open, and soaked the carpet with grade A yellow honey.

You could have heard Ann wail from a block away. “Don’t fret too much about it,” we consoled her. “Let it go. Think Shakespeare: parting is such sweet sorrow.” We did not really laugh at Ann. But inside we all thought it hilariously funny. Now that is schadenfreude, joie mauvaise, there is no English word for the nasty joy of snickering at your neighbor’s more or less harmless mishaps.

It is always fun when such things happen to someone else. But the night I brought the giant pizza home, lifting it out of the car holding the carton with both hands, and the pizza-juice soaked bottom gave way, dropping the precious pie — sausage, anchovies, mushrooms, bacon, olives and all — on the garage floor, that was tragic, not funny. Yet my children found it necessary to roll on the floor laughing.

Just a week ago or so I had a little mishap that laid me open to schadenfreude. I was going to paint a shelf black. I decided to use a spray can, not my familiar brush technique. I shook the can thirty-one times as directed, then aimed at the shelf, I thought, and hit the trigger. A burst of black paint hit my chin and I instantly morphed into a vaudeville blackface. I was alone at the time and thus had to force myself to laugh at myself. Ridi pagliaccio came to mind. But I shouldn’t make light of Leonvavallo’s gripping opera. As Woody Allen would say, it breaks.