I Can't Wait Until I Get Home to Ride My New Bike! (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

 ***********************************

Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, BeThere2Day, and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     

***********************************

Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.    

This month, the prompts are being provided by David M Gascoigne and they will be posted by Elephant's Child.         

This week's prompts are:

 

• Wine
• Oneself
• Once
• Approaching
• Admission
• Kidding

and/or

• Face
• Life
• Accept
• Sunny
• Aches
• Dread

 

Charlotte/Mother Owl's color of the month is May Green, if we decide to use it.

Have fun.

(Please note this is based on a true story and happened long before cell phones had become ubiquitous.)

I woke up and at ONCE realized I'd overslept.

Looking at my alarm clock, I couldn't figure out for the LIFE of me how the alarm either hadn't sounded, or I'd slept through it.  It's not like I'd been out drinking the night before, heck, in my current jobless state I couldn't even afford cheap WINE from the supermarket much less a night out with friends.

The workouts I'd been more conscientious to do since I started this round of job-hunting had left me with ACHES in a few places where I'd forgotten I have places, but I needed to jump up and get moving anyway, hoping to make up the time and salvage something of this morning.

Downing the piece of break I'd jammed in the toaster and grabbing the coffee I had dripping while brushing my teeth, I got into my good interview suit and headed for the door as fast as I could get going.

Great, it was raining.  Of course, it couldn't be a SUNNY day, that had to go wrong, too.  But in LIFE, you have to ACCEPT what you can't change, and you can't change rain, and you can't turn the clock back to being on time.

When I saw the slow traffic on the highway I knew my morning was gone.  Then I realized the slowdown was short, it was only a car on the shoulder of the road.  Looking closer, I saw a woman in a business suit staring down at a flat tire and shaking her head.

That's when I realized I had to stop and change her tire for her.  There's no way to be "late sooner," as my mother always told me, but my DREAD of how the rest of the morning was going to go vanished.  Here I was being handed the perfect excuse to be late for an interview, the excuse-above-all-excuses, I'd stopped to be the Knight in Armor, the Good Samaritan, the tire-changer to a fellow person in need on this very needy planet.

She registered concern first when I stopped, which I understood, and I called from next to my car I was willing to change her tire if she wanted.  I guess my good interview suit convinced her I wasn't such a bad risk, and I told her I had a jack in the back of my vehicle if she didn't.

There was a jack in the trunk of her car, along with a good spare, and by the time I'd finished we were both a bit bedraggled from the fine mist the rain had become and were KIDDING each other about looking worse for wear.  I'd told her I was on my way for a job interview and she wished me luck before we both drove off.

I finally pulled into the parking lot of the large complex and APPROACHING the security guard to ask for ADMISSION to the building made me feel like a high school freshman asking the seniors to let you pass the hall and get to your class.  They might or might not be in the mood to be generous.  He looked me over, and I held out my greasy hands saying I'd helped a lady on the road by changing her tire, and he nodded and let me in.

Then it was the person at the front desk.  She, however, had a smile on her face and it grew huge when I told her I was there for an interview and how I'd been held up.  

"It's funny, the person who will be interviewing you is late, also!  You can go have a seat over in that waiting area and I'll call you when it's time," she told me, and I thought maybe I'd caught my lucky break after all.

I thanked her and asked for a washroom, showing her my greasy hands, and she cheerfully pointed me in the right direction.

Often, I thought, looking at my FACE in the mirror as I tried to get the black grease off my hands, one can fool ONESELF, but honestly, as damp and rumpled as I thought I looked, I didn't think I had even a ghost of a chance on this job.

Still, I was going to go through with it, and I selected a May Green seat in the tastefully decorated waiting area, grabbing a magazine to flip through just to give my hands something to do.

Then I heard a voice I thought sounded familiar call to the lady behind the desk, "Sandra, is my morning interview here yet?"

"He's right there," the receptionist pointed at me, and I stood up and started into the face of the lady whose tire I'd changed.

We still laugh together over the story of how I came to work for her.

***********************************

Today is:

Birthday of the Raja -- Perlis, Malaysia

Dea Dia Festival -- Ancient Roman Calendar (goddess of growth)

Dia de las Letras Gallegas -- GA, Spain (Galician Literature Day in Galacia, an autonomous region of Spain)

Falling Off a Log Night -- Fairy Calendar

Feast of Azamat(Grandeur) -- Baha'i

Grand Spring Festival -- Toshogu Shrine, Nikko, Japan (through tomorrow; includes horseback archery, processions in costume, and more)

International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia

Liberation Day -- Democratic Republic of the Congo

Merry-Go-Round Day -- the first merry-go-round, powered by horses, opened this day in 1620

National Cherry Cobbler Day

National Employee Health & Fitness Day -- US (originally the 3rd Wednesday in May, but now spreading around the world as Global Employee Health & Fitness Month)   

National Walnut Day -- declared in 1949 by the Walnut Marketing Board

Navy Day -- Argentina (anniversary of the victory at the Battle of Montevideo in 1814)

Pack Rat Day -- come on out and admit it, you are a pack rat, too!

Rubber Band Day -- patented this day in 1845, and aren't we pack rats glad.

Shunki Reitaisai -- Toshogu Shrine, Nikko, Japan (Grand Festival of Spring, through the 18th)

St. Madron of Cornwall's Day (Patron against pain)

Syttende Mai -- Nauru; Norway; Svalbard and Jan Mayen (Constitution Day)

Tell An Umpire "I Love Your Outfit" Day -- only if he has a sense of humor or you can duck quickly

Turn Beauty Inside Out Day -- the day to remember what really counts is who you are, not just what you look like

Watch a Baby Fall Asleep Day -- because few things in the world are as funny and precious

World Hypertension Day    

World Neurofibromatosis Awareness Day --  for information about neurofibromatosis click here or here    

World Telecommunication and Information Society Day -- UN

Birthdays Today:

Nikki Reed, 1988

Tahj Mowry, 1987

Drew Roy, 1986

Andrea Corr, 1974

Sendhil Ramamurthy, 1974

Mia Hamm, 1972

Jordan Knight, 1970

Trent Reznor, 1965

Craig Ferguson, 1962

Enya, 1961

Sugar Ray Leonard, 1956

Bob Saget, 1956

Bill Paxton, 1955

Debra Winger, 1955

Christian Lacroix, 1950

Dennis Hopper, 1936

Maureen O'Sullivan, 1911

James "Cool Papa" Bell, 1903

Joseph Norman Lockyer, 1836

Edward Jenner, 1749

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Information Please!"(Radio), 1938

"Shéhérazade"(Ravel song cycle), 1904

Comic Cuts(Comic Paper, first publication), 1890

"Cavalleria rusticana/Rustic Chivalry"(Opera), 1890

Today in History:

Italian Jesuit Niccolo Zucchi becomes the first to see 2 belts on Jupiter's surface, 1630

Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve founds the Ville Marie de Montréal, 1642

Frontenac becomes governor of New France (Canada), 1672

Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette begin exploring the Mississippi River, 1673

England passes the Molasses Act, putting high tariffs on rum & molasses imported to the colonies from a country other than British possessions, 1733

The US Continental Congress bans trade with Canada, 1775

The New York Stock Exchange is founded, 1792

John Hawkins & Richard French patent the Reaping Machine, 1803

Napoleon I of France  orders the annexation of the Papal States to the French Empire, 1809

Occupation of Monaco changes from French to Austrian, 1814

Antoine Joseph Sax patents the saxophone, 1846

Rosalía de Castro publishes Cantares Gallegos, the first book in the Galician language, 1863

Aristides wins the first Kentucky Derby, 1875

Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais discovers the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient mechanical analog computer, 1902

The Columbia Lions and the Princeton Tigers play in the first-ever televised sporting event, a collegiate baseball game in New York City, 1939

The United States Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 1954

Soviet Venera 6 begins its descent into the atmosphere  of Venus, sending back atmospheric data before being crushed by pressure, 1969

Thor Heyerdahl sets sail from Morocco on the papyrus boat Ra II to sail the Atlantic Ocean, 1970

Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path attacks a polling location in the town of Chuschi, Ayacucho, starting the Internal conflict in Peru, 1980

Lebanon, Israel, and the United States sign an agreement on Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, 1983

After 18 years as the mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac takes office as President of France, 1995

Three days of popular protests against the government of Prime Minister of Thailand Suchinda Kraprayoon begin in Bangkok, leading to a military crackdown, 1992

Zaire is officially renamed Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1997

Massachusetts becomes the first US State to legalize same-sex marriage, 2004

The aircraft carrier USS Oriskany is sunk in the Gulf of Mexico as an artificial reef, 2008

Dalia Grybauskaite is elected the first female President of Lithuania, 2009

The brightest lunar meteor impact ever observed is recorded by NASA, 2013

Gina Haspel is confirmed as the first female director of the CIA by the US Senate, 2018

In the first study of its kind, the World Health Organization claims in 2016, long working hours led to 745 000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease, 2021