"Who's gonna drive you home tonight?"

(title quote: The Cars, Drive)

"It happened fast in a flash, just this evening
As I hit the gas, horn blast, brakes were screaming
As the car crashed, broken glass, broke my dreaming."
- Mat Kearney

Sometimes it seems like every forward step I take is accompanied by two leaps backwards. It's not the job, that's great so far. I still feel like I'm wearing someone else's shoes, but at least they're close to the right size. I'm actually not too bad at this. I haven't sold any of the difficult items we are asked to sell to customers, like memberships or magazine subscriptions, but I came extremely close to both today. There's no commission involved, but we do have sales goals.

"Went out and hopped in my old ford
Hit the engine but she ain't turnin'
We've given each other some hard lessons lately
But we ain't learnin'
We're the same sad story thats a fact
One step up and two steps back."
- Bruce Springsteen, One Step Up

I was actually comfortable enough today to start working humor into my repertoire. I'm normally always the clown who's cracking jokes and stuff, but I had to learn the procedures and equipment to get comfortable with it before I could start to loosen up. Today, I started letting myself into my work persona and letting that persona be more pure "me" than it was the first day. I can also open myself up in a way I couldn't do as a teacher. I did get my first irate customer today, but she was apparently functionally illiterate. She kept leaving a word out of a promotional poster to justify her saving money, even when I underlined the word with my finger. Oh well, I've handled worse during my time as a teacher. She didn't show me anything I haven't seen a million times worse.

I also had a young lady come in looking for a CD she didn't think I was going to be familiar with, but which happens to be one of my favorite CD's. It is Awake by Secondhand Serenade. She came in to listen to it on one of our machines because it was recommended by a friend. I sold her on it almost instantly. We compared musical tastes and found that she likes a lot of my favorite music. I told her to come back in for more recommendations and told her she could even listen on my ipod if we didn't have something in the store and I would order it for her. I also had a customer come in looking for a good "jazzy" piano CD and I was able to recommend some of my favorite jazz pianists for his listening enjoyment. I guess I'm still teaching.

"Stripped and polished, I am new, I am fresh." - Secondhand Serenade, Your Call

It was as I was leaving the parking lot that fate struck. I was following my co-worker to the bank because we have a "two man rule" for deposits, when as I rounded the corner, my brakes failed. I knew as soon as I stepped on the pedal that it wasn't gonna be enough. My dad's car, which is what I was driving since it's been amazingly hot and humid here, sometimes loses power when it first starts running, like a "brown out" in a house. If I let it idle a bit before taking off, it evens out, but since my co-worker started to pull out, I had to go.

When we got to the end of the driveway and he stopped, I hit the brakes and the power went down as I took my foot off the gas. When I pressed the pedal, it didn't give me enough, so I had to muscle it down and then it just locked up. I slid into the back of my co-worker's car. He had been telling me earlier that he's been in six accidents over the past two years and none have been his fault. I don't remember if he braked late or not. I was too busy with the mental "OH SHIT!!!" response (I said it, but at least I didn't do it, proving Bill Cosby at least partially wrong). I didn't think he wanted to demonstrate his proclivity for car wrecks just to prove it was true.

"Now whether or not you hit the truck, you are going to have soiled underwear. Cause first you say it, then you do it!" - Bill Cosby

We both got out of the car and made sure the other was unhurt. His car, which is an old tank of a car, even older and more tank-like than my dad's car, didn't even have a single scratch on it anywhere. Nothing. My dad's car, on the other hand, is in need of a new front bumper and left side headlight assembly. I already bent the grill guard back into place and have a mallet I can use to straighten the hood. That should be well within my body work capabilities (why do you think I have a body mallet?... I had to pop a dent out of my trunk lid once). Bumpers and the accompanying paint job are not cheap. He was okay with not calling it in, since his car was completely undamaged and my dad doesn't have collision coverage on his car, just liability. He has always insured them like that, just enough to be legal and I don't understand it. I'm glad he was cool about that, since I don't need the points on my license or increased insurance rate at all. I just hope that he is still friendly with me at work and really doesn't hold it against me. My big worry now is the damage to my dad's car (which my mom calls her car) and their reaction to it. My mom is going to cry.

“You win some, lose some, and wreck some." - Dale Earnhardt

Once when I was about 11, I was building a model airplane and went to ask my father a question. I set the glue bottle down on her new coffee table in the living room and when I picked it up a few minutes later, it had taken the finish off in the shape of the bottom of the bottle. My dad and I went to the hardware store and bough all the necessary supplies to refinish that spot, but the new finish either soaked in or rubbed right off. My dad set a doily over it and we hoped she wouldn't notice. When she arrived home from work, she immediately walked over to the out of place doily and lifted it, revealing the scar underneath. She burst into tears and ran into her bedroom. She actually stayed up all night crying that night and didn't leave her room the next day (remember, she cried so hard when she found out I resigned my teaching job that she had to go home from work the rest of the day and then lost the next two nights of sleep). She cried herself to sleep that night. She didn't speak to either of us for about two weeks. She has still not forgiven us for that table we ruined 26 years ago. She is going to be less than pleased about the car.

“There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed." - Napoleon Bonaparte

I don't have the money to fix it. Even with the new job, we are going to be in a financial bind, which is like saying the Exxon Valdez had a small leak. The job simply doesn't pay enough to cover our expenses yet. We just had another car repair. Even if I let the bumper go until later, I will need the headlight, and soon. Even if I get the promotion to management training and then assistant manager in a timely manner, it will still take time for that to happen and my income to increase. Even if I get that, I will have a 50% pay cut from my teaching job. I knew that going into this, but was hoping no additional expenses like car repairs would pop up to debilitate us.

My wife has a contract to build a website (she is just getting into freelance graphic design and though she has done some jobs already, this is her first website, so she is struggling with some of the coding), so that will help if she can get it finished soon (any html wizards want to serve as troubleshooters?). I need to get some queries... heck, a query, accepted quickly... for pay. I am off Thursday and Friday, so I will be working on some ideas I have for queries and fleshing out my "big idea" for one that I've been researching in my free time. It's a great idea for an article for a men's magazine, but it's research intensive and I want it to be flawless and well informed.

Maybe this is a sign that I need to get on the stick and be more active in marketing myself as a writer. This is a call to action, the abandonment of complacency. This is a catalyst to avoid getting caught up in the rhythm of my new job and life. This is a trigger to keep me from letting my dream of writing get lost in the currents of life and the world around me.

“On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use." - Epictetus