When Things Go Wrong

“It could be worse”, I remind myself.  But as the tail pipe blows out a plume of white smoke from the vehicle we just bought I know in my heart of hearts that a cracked head is as bad as it gets for most people.  “At least it’s not my head”, I think, as I bang my altogether useless frontal lobes against the windshield.  My teeth are grinding and I know the dentist will find at least $500.00 worth of preventive maintenance to perform if I want to be chewing corn on the cob with my own teeth by the time I’m 75.  So I calm down.  Hey, at least I have two other vehicles to fall back on.

The next morning as I drive the van into town to do errands, it quits.  No warning.  No funny noises telling me that in the next ten seconds this four ton hulk will turn into a great white elephant with an attitude.  It miraculously restarts as if nothing was wrong.  “Just kidding”, I hear the starter whine.  What a comedian.  But the next night, after an excruciating school board meeting I am stranded in the high school parking lot.  Luckily, Tom Cromwell, who just finished the custodial night shift spots me and gives me a lift home.  We both get our frustrations out by bad mouthing the new school board.

Well at least we have the pickup.  With 192,000 miles and only moderate rust, it has never let us down.  It’s made in Japan and I plan to pass it on to my grandchildren.  So while two of our three vehicles are being examined by the experts and the third is somewhere else in Central Pennsylvania, I decide to get the tractors ready for spring.  I am torn between the exhilaration of the spring air and the gnawing anxiety that anything with pistons and four wheels is going to let me down.  But after a few hours of routine maintenance I find only a little sludge in the settling bowl,  the hydraulic leak is easily fixed and the beast starts on the first try.  Hey, cool, I’m on a roll!

The next morning I am accosted by unaccustomed noises everywhere I go.  The greenhouse heater sounds like a bazooka every time it kicks on; the answering machine wheezes like an asthmatic whenever the phone rings; and the voices of ducks echo off the pond even though there’s not a living thing on the surface of the water.  I know I’m losing it at this point.  Something has to go right soon or I’ll be hearing the voice of God telling me I have to defend our shores against the immanent invasion of mad cow disease.

As if winter wasn’t price enough for the coming of Spring, the object of impending breakdown accosts me every time I walk out the door.  Already the farmers are complaining about the malicious weather – too wet, too cold, soon to be too dry, too hot.   Soon, though, exhilaration will take hold as we get five straight days of intense sunshine and sweet breezes that will lift these ballooning disasters into afterthought.  Already there is one plowed field – a small foothold of optimism.  Every day there is more green and less brown.  Perennials are waiting for no one as they brave aberrant cold snaps.  And the peepers are back!  I will take my own advice to the emotionally overdrawn and ignore the weather forecast.  The potatoes will get planted in their own sweet time, in spite of all the litanies of complaint.