Little Wonders

I think that in the midst of chaos, we somehow find the things that are important to us.

This week has been slightly hellish. Monday morning, a student was reported as having stolen a gun from home and gone missing. The school went into lockdown for the day(both Alex and I were instructed not to come to work; At least he got paid for it). When nothing happened, they reopened the school for Tuesday classes. Then, the police informed us that he was last seen buying ammo. And that fucked up everything.

Now, there are a lot of sides to this debate; Last month, this same kid had been waving a gun around at a frat party. Since then, he's been the target of "bullying", if one could call a consequence of the general dissatisfaction of having a peer get drunk and whip out a gun on you "bullying" , and now everyone thinks that he... Well... You know. And so sets in the guilt, and regret, and all that.

Whatever happened, I was pretty scared. Not for myself, because I'm at the ass end of our lovely campus, but for those coworkers of mine that are always out and about in the open. Mainly, the muse. I spent all of Monday worrying about him, and later that night I gathered the cojones to text him. He was doing fine, and said that he'd thought of me that day and hoped I was doing well. I was beyond delighted.

So when the call came for all non-essential staff to go home Tuesday, I was above and beyond relieved. And I mean, way more relieved than I had thought I might be. Yet there he was, standing in my office, wanting to know about towing his car. I was brief. I was dismissive. I was a little bitchy. And I told him to get off campus like, three times.

Later, I apologized for it. I couldn't find any way around it, so I flat out told him that I was worried about his safety(which may have come as a surprise; I don't know). And knowing that I was worried, he continued texting me for a bit, dumb jokes just to make me feel better. We made plans to tow his car the next day, and ended up texting well into the evening. It was different, too. When we text, it's usually about dumb things or puns, but we ended up talking about normal, day to day things. It was good change.

When it came to actually towing the car, I was on edge. After all, my tow guy is my dad, so... Hey, meet my dad! And it was alright. We hooked up the cars and he wanted to drive the old car one last time. I played it cool, but I think he sensed my discomfort and let me drive with him in the passenger seat(I would like to point out that I don't advise people to do that on most occasions; I just know I'm good enough at it to keep him safe. Like motorcyclists who know when they're good enough to carry passengers).

The muse is not a lover of things fast and dangerous. Roller coasters? Hell no. Skydiving? Absolutely not. Being dragged behind another van at 60 miles per hour with little to no brakes or steering?

He did not enjoy the ride at all.

There was a slight incident where dad slammed on the brakes for a school bus and we hit the back of him, but comparatively it was a light tap. I like to think that the muse was impressed by my ability to bring a car to a full stop without brakes and on super short notice. After the car was scrapped, he even split the cash with us three ways(It was only $60, but still). On a whim, I asked if he'd like to come to dinner with dad and I, and he accepted. We agreed to go home, get cleaned up, and reconvene at a slightly later hour.

[Insert montage of me, getting called in to work for an hour, making myself look presentable really fast, etc. Montage should be set to "Takin' Care of Business" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive.]
We agreed to meet at the chinese buffet, because let's face it, they're men. We had a lovely dinner and afterwards, dad scooted a bit more quickly than usual(Still not sure if this was intuition or the fact that it was late at night).

It ended up that the muse and I went to the movies(The Martian, 10/10, great movie) in sort-of nearby Middletown. And as this thing grows longer than I usually care for, I'll summarize: We had a good fucking time. He even got out of the car at the end to avoid that awkward car hug we always seem to do and the next day, he stopped by work(he had off, but I was considered "essential personnel" this week) and gave me a candle holder.

It just struck me how in the middle of something that can be called a crisis, may be called a tragedy, and caused a whole lot of stress no matter what it's called, I found a rare and precious memory. In a pile of fertilizer, I found a diamond.

The great poet Rob Thomas once said "Our lives are made in these small hours, these little wonders, there twists and turns of fate". He's right. And cute.