It was
supposed to be a birthday present to myself, a road trip with my sister who
needed a change of scenery, and a relaxing day for chatting and visiting our
father's grave. And honestly it started out that way....
Even though
an hour before we were scheduled to leave, I received a call from a woman who
was trying to re-home a dog. She asked if I could "come today" to
meet her, as she was going out of town.
Well, what
the heck, it was essentially... sort of... on our way down to Corona del Mar,
so yeah, we'd hop off the freeway and meet the dog.
Except when
we arrived at exactly the appointed time, the woman responded to my text
saying, "I'm across the street at the grocery store. Be there to meet you
in a minute." Which she was... sort of... after she unloaded her groceries
while I stood in the sun and waited for her to meet me at the gate to her
apartments... only to find, when she arrived, that the dog was, um, not quite
"as advertised." I'll leave it at that.
Back on the
road, my sister and I chatted about dogs and our kids and our grandkids and our
childhood as we motored along Highway 241, a toll road cut through the hills between the Anaheim Hills and the ocean (because of course
I have a Fastrak transponder on my new truck, so we could easily cruise the
toll road). In no time, we were pulling into Pacific View Cemetery and
strolling over to Dad's grave.
It was a
pleasant visit. We left flowers on his headstone and sang a duet of his
favorite song, "Danny Boy." Then it was back in the truck and a short
drive down Pacific Coast Highway (with views of the ocean we hadn't seen in a
while) to our destination: Las Brisas Restaurant in Laguna Beach. I dropped Peg
at the entrance so she could get us a table, and I went looking for parking,
which I readily found, pulling into a spot where someone had just pulled out. I
knew the routine: Slide the Visa card into the slot and hope I'm not paying a
fortune for the hour or so we'd be eating lunch.
Lunch—was
fantastic. Great food, a terrific chocolate mousse cake, which we debated about
getting because, with the dog stop in the beginning of our journey, it was
getting on toward afternoon, and we knew we had to beat the traffic home, but
once we ate it, we both agreed it was worth sitting in traffic for. Little did
we know....
We also drank
lots and lots of chilled water. Here's how our very slow and often inattentive
server offered that:
"What
can I get you ladies to drink? We have water or Evian, iced tea, a glass of
wine...."
"Oh, you
have Evian? We'd like that."
We did indeed
like it. So much so that we ordered a second bottle and shared it. We might
have enjoyed it less had we known that the chilled glass bottles of Evian he
brought to the table and poured into our wine glasses with a flourish were $12
a pop, adding a whopping $24 to the bill when it came. Yikes! I know, I know; a
fancier person would have expected that. My brother would have asked the price
of the fancy water first. But he's fancier than I am. Whatever. It's only
money. And I can be that cavalier about it now, because someone else ended up
paying for it. But I'll get to that....
We headed
home. Thirty minutes into the drive, my sister told me she needed a pitstop.
(All that expensive water, you see.) But we were back in the canyon, driving
the toll road. There was nowhere to stop. And she was getting desperate with
every passing minute.
"Just
pull over," she said. "I'll find a bush."
Let's be
honest. Guys do this all the time. One of the advantages of having a small hose
(or, okay, whatever size it is) attached to your bladder is that you can drain
it standing up. Women can't. And some people would be shocked at the thought of
a woman squatting behind a bush. But let me tell you, as free roaming children
at a very young age, we did what was necessary so we could still wander and
explore (and probably get into some kind of predicament). As adults, my sister
and I both went on trail rides on our horses along riverbeds and on isolated
trails. I still hike in wilderness areas—where no one has thought to install
restrooms. So yeah, it wasn't really a big deal.
I followed
the turn-off for Santiago Canyon Road, found a spot to pull over, and Peg
walked off into the bushes and relieved herself. We were back on the road in
under ten minutes. Easy peasy.
Except....
I merged back
onto the toll road to find that apparently a few thousand of our neighbors were
also heading in our same direction, so five lanes of flowing traffic became two
lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic, the long back-up occurring when both those
lanes had to merge into one to join the 91 freeway. We were now rolling slowly,
averaging 15 miles per hour.
I'm a
California native. Generally speaking, traffic like this isn't an issue for me.
I simply sit in the comfort of my Ford Maverick (with excellent lumbar support)
and enjoy the scenery (if there is any). But on this day, I had left the house
at 8:30, taking Maya out before I left. Confident we'd be back by early
afternoon, I hadn't arranged for my dog wrangler to come over and let her out.
But now, since it was already 3:00p.m., far past the time Maya should have had
a potty break, I called the teen wrangler's grandmother to ask if she could
pick the kid up and have her do me that favor.
"Sure,"
was the immediate answer. Then I remembered: I'd locked the house up tight
before I left. Damn.
The next call
was to my next-door neighbor, Gus, who told me when I moved in, "Hey, I
have a key to your house" (from the previous owner). "Do you want it
back? Or do you want me to keep it in case of an emergency?"
Thank
goodness Gus has a key, I thought. But... that was eight years ago. When I
called, Gus couldn't remember having a key. Or our conversation. "Even if
I did have one," he said, "I would have no idea where it is
now."
Sigh. Poor
Maya! She would have to wait. A much longer time than I anticipated....
About this
time, Peg started patting her pockets, scanning the floorboards, and asking,
"Where's my phone?" I couldn't help her look. I had to keep my eyes
on the car ahead of me so as not to bump.
"When
did you last have it?"
"I don't
know," she said. "At the restaurant maybe? I might've left it in the
restroom. I took it out of my back pocket and put it on the toilet paper
holder."
Brief aside
here: This is not the first time I've been with my sister that she's left her
phone in a public restroom.
Since my
phone was synced with my car, I could call Las Brisas without too much
distraction. The very kind hostess searched the restroom and their lost and
found box. No phone.
I tried
calling Peg's phone to see if it was in the truck and she just couldn't see it.
We heard nothing, and about that time traffic cleared, and Peg said,
"Maybe it fell out of my pocket when I got out to pee."
Oh, lord.
We'd finally
made the transition onto the 91 and traffic was moving along at 70 miles per
hour. We could be home in another hour or so. I could let Maya out. My
shoulders could go back to their normal position instead of hovering around my
ears with worry about my poor dog.
But what else
was there to do?
I took the
next ramp off, crossed back over the freeway and got back on in the opposite
direction. We breezed back to the Santiago Canyon Road exit, I pulled up to
where I'd stopped to let Peg out previously, and she got out to look. She was
roaming through the brush, eyes on the ground, when I called her phone to see
if we could hear the ring.
Boy howdy,
did we hear it. Or at least I did.
"Peg,
come here."
Her phone was
in the passenger seat. She'd been sitting on it.
If only there
hadn't been all that traffic noise earlier when I called it. If only we'd
pulled over and stopped for a minute, had her get out and look. If only we
hadn't stayed to eat that indescribably delicious chocolate mousse cake.
Wait. Scratch
that last bit. I will never regret ordering that cake.
Back on the
toll road with my apologetic sis, I inched into traffic again. Now, however,
the traffic was worse. So when I say "inched," I literally mean we
were moving at zero miles per hour. The line of traffic stretched endlessly
before us. I took deep breaths to belay the worry about Maya. When you're in a
situation you can't control, you only make it worse by getting angry or upset.
Wise words, no? Yeah, it's only taken me about 70 years to learn that lesson.
So I tried to
relax into my Zen mode. We would be home when we arrived home. I would practice
patience and deep breathing until then.
Which is
when, with a loud thump, my truck was rear-ended, and all my meditative energy
exited the vehicle as I did, right in that long line of equally frustrated
motorists.
I marched
back to the car behind me, looking first at the damage to my beautiful new
truck. The right side of the license plate was crumpled. Slightly. That was it.
The driver of the car that hit me was a kid, twenty years old. I told him, in
my sternest Mom/Teacher voice, to get over to the emergency lane, which meant
both of us shifting over two lanes. The cars behind us had seen what happened
and let us over.
I took a
photo of the license plate of his car, then one of his driver's license.
"Let me
see your registration," I told him.
"It's
not my car," he said.
"Who is
it registered to?" I asked.
"It's
not registered," he said.
Then suddenly
he was on the phone with his father, telling him what happened in the
profoundly mortified voice that only a young man who has previously believed
himself to be badass has when he has to call his mommy or daddy and admit to
being a dumbass. Deepening his humiliation, I'm sure, was the fact that his
buddy was sitting next to him in the car. Nothing worse than looking like a
dumbass in front of your bestie.
But Dad had a
plan.
"Will
you take cash?" the boy asked, his father still shouting instructions on
the other end of the line.
We both
looked at my license plate again.
"I don't
know," I said. "How much does it cost to replace a license
plate?"
"Um...."
the kid said, still dazed and confused.
His pal was
on it, though, showing me his phone when his search turned up the answer. Fifty
bucks.
"Okay,"
I said, "do you have fifty dollars cash?"
"Um... I
have Citi Bank...?" the kid replied.
Once again,
the coherent passenger was on it. There was an ATM twelve miles from our
location. I tapped the address into my phone.
"Follow
me there," I told the driver. "Meet me in the parking lot or I'm
calling the cops."
Yep, I said
"calling the cops." What was it the Apostle Paul said about 'becoming
all things to all people'? I learned this as a teacher. Talk kid talk to kids.
And I was still using my your-behavior-was-inappropriate voice with him.
It took us an
entire hour to drive those twelve miles. But that young man followed right
along behind like a baby duckling, pulling into the parking lot and jogging for
the ATM. Moments later, he handed me three twenty-dollar bills.
"The ATM
only gives twenties," he said.
"I don't
have change for you," I said. Okay, yeah, maybe I had two fives in my
wallet in my purse in the backseat of the truck, but I wasn't going to fetch
that for him.
"No,
it's fine," he said, handing me the money and looking like he was about to
cry.
I took the
money, showing him my phone as I deleted the photos I'd taken of his license
plate and driver's license.
"We're
square," I said, and I held out my hand. We shook on it and departed.
By then, it
was 5:00p.m. We hit the freeway again, and I finally arrived home after 6:00.
Maya had been without a potty break for nearly ten hours. But she hadn't had an
accident in the house.
Who's a good
girl?!? It has taken me years to get her fully housebroken as she was so used
to having to do everything in her small kennel. My poor girl. What a good, good
girl.
DENOUMENT (if
you're still reading, and if you wandered off, I still love you, you tried,
dear soul, to get through this interminably long, self-absorbed rant):
I don't
really care about my license plate. Anyone who's bought a new car knows it's
only a matter of days or weeks before somebody bumps, dings, scuffs, or
otherwise mars it. I got away easy. I took the kid's money to teach him a
lesson. And besides, check this out:
Final total
for our back and forth on the toll road: $22
Really
expensive fancy water: $24
Parking by
Las Brisas with a view of the ocean: $ 1
Yep, a
dollar. The meter still had time on it when I parked.
Really
expensive fancy chocolate mousse cake: $13
All that adds
up to fifty bucks, plus I got ten more for the inconvenience of having to go to
the kid's bank. That equals what he handed me in cash. The way I figure it, Peg
and I had an adventure, no one was injured, we enjoyed a great lunch, saw the
ocean, and most important, we sang for Dad. All things considered, we had a
blessed day. True story!