Am I Fixed Yet?
I was driving back to my North Carolina home, at dusk, in unrepentant rainfall.
Excuse me? Unrepentant?
Ever heard of Hurricane Helene? (If not, where the hell have you been?) Yes, Helene was unrepentant in her devastating encompass of North Carolina. My little college town was considerably east of the worst damage in the mountains, but Helene was still intent on leaving her calling card in Chapel Hill. Buckets and buckets, and even more buckets, of that wet stuff, plunging down.
What, in heaven‘s name, motivated me to drive in this madness? It was my vanity’s fault! (Vanity, are you paying attention?) I was desperate for a haircut.
Geez, in Helene?
Vanity can be a driving little sucker…
An outcome of my untoward vanity was that the rural road leading to my neighborhood might be flooded. I was already deep into worry about abandoning my car by the side of the road and walking home. No fan favorite, here, of wet, cold feet…(well, are you?)
Suddenly, a car pulled out of a driveway right in front of me and, whoa, came to an abrupt halt. I panicked. Just panicked. My car slipped and slid, trying to stop. No, no, please, not in the ditch!
Skidded to a halt, fortunately, minus any ditch-dunking. The driver who’d triggered this fear-inducing stop, opened his window, and waved me around him on the sopping wet two-lane road.
Scared and furious. My heart pounding to beat the band. I was also fast-composing a script in my mind, replete with searing judgments about the insensitive driver in front of me. Jeez, doesn’t he know we’re in a hurricane? (Just like I knew I was in a hurricane, but was driving anyway…hmmm.)
Slowly, I began to pull around his car. Suddenly, I saw the reason for his abrupt, and in my mind, completely unsafe stop in the midst of Hurricane Helene. A beautiful box turtle was slowly inching across the road. The driver who I’d begun cutting to smithereens in my mind, had scrunched to a stop to avoid hitting the little crawler.
He exited his car in this pouring wetness, wearing no rain gear. Picked up the critter and moved it to the other side of the road. So much for my quickly gelling judgmental script. It just went poof. From one turtle lover to another, I opened my car window, stuck my head out in the pouring rain, shouting “thank you,” several times over. Felt much better for doing so.
Like the soaking wet rescuer, I’m an ardent turtle mama. Such a turtle rescue mama, that I’ve narrowly avoided being hit by a car in my own mania to save a turtle. In my craze of “gotta save that turtle,” I literally slam on the brakes and jump out of my car, (generally, forgetting to look both ways for other cars.) Barreling toward moving the turtle to the other the side of the road.
Oh, as a FYI for possible future rescuers, frightened turtles often pee on the hands of their turtle saviors. I did say I love turtles, didn’t I?
Am I fixed yet? Did my psyche receive a powerful enough change stimulant to stop me from making instantaneous negative judgments of others? Who am I kidding? As a human, I’m always going to be a work in progress. This doesn’t mean I can’t continually try to up my game, even as the fallible person I am. Like all turtles I adore, I may move slowly, but I’m moving…