Sunday was chilly. After a week of warm sunshine in Michigan we quickly forget that this place is 2 figurative steps away from Antarctica and we start wearing sandals and t-shirts the second there is no more snow on the ground. The sun was bright yesterday but it wasn’t creating any heat. Clouds cast shadows on my newly planted pansies; they shivered all day in the icy breeze skittering through. Poor pansies.
I left for work at 6:05pm. I was in a slump because Sunday night is usually spent lolling on my love seat recliner eating popcorn and reading trash novels. Once I got out and started working I was all right; it was only going to be a couple hours so I sucked it up and gave myself an internal beat-down for being so whine-y.
At 9PM, on my way out this guy shows up in our building asking about the bus system. He’d been waiting at a bus stop for 45 minutes and no bus went by. hmmm. the buses are supposedly running; we check the website. Yup, buses run till 12:15am. hmmm. he said he knew they were definitely running that day because that was how he came to be standing in the spot he was in. but now, at 9pm, he was stranded. we looked up different bus lines for him but they unfortunately didn’t have sunday service. shit. “okay, well, we can call you a taxi, how bout that?” “nah”, he says, “I’ll just walk, it’s colder than it looks outside.” we all agreed that it was and he went right and i went left. guilt was pressuring me to give him a ride but my brain was on a powerpoint presentation of slides showing what happens to girls who give strange men a ride home. it’s so stupid to be getting in a car and not giving the poor man a ride to his apartment. 20/20 has me paranoid and all i can think about is my inhumanity and how i am such a selfish person for not having some decency and courtesy. no way though, no way can i put this guy in my front seat and drive into the night. decency and courtesy is nice and so is not being strangled. so i pushed the radio dial on along with the heat– 93.9 had The Barenaked Ladies in their studio doing a live show. Within 60 seconds their song, Pinch Me, was welling in my ears and the lyrics go “I could walk but I’ll just drive / It’s colder than it looks outside”
The lyrics sharpened my senses–immediately I analyzed the entire evening for evidence. any evidence pointing to anything. unearthly coincidences are signs. that is just the way it goes in my world. it seemed so blatant that his last sentence was the lyric to a song i would go to my car and listen to. but, i haven’t figured out if it means anything. maybe a coincidence really is just a coincidence this time. the blaring obviousness of it makes me feel that the universe is trying to tell me something…and i am not interpreting it.