Yesterday I loaded up my vehicle with six weeks’ worth of
laundry in prep for a trip to the laundromat. I was tired, had worked third
shift the night before, and was in a rush to finish the chore before meeting a
friend for a late lunch. I got into my laundry-filled car, closed the door,
started the engine, cranked up my music, and let my head fall back against
headrest. I let myself marinate for long enough to take a couple of deep
breaths and then backed the car out.
Blip, blip, blip, blip, vibraaaaate…
Shit. Another flat tire. Yes, folks, that’s the fourth
case of flat tires I’ve had in two months, and all intentionally caused by some
secret hate assassin. One of my neighbors has it out for me. Thing is, I have
so many new neighbors that my dog has taken to barking at everything. She’s
normally more docile than most cats, but I figure she’s just doing her job and
letting me know that she hears some new people on the block. I figure that she
will eventually get used to the new sounds in her world and get over it.
My landlord got three calls in one night about her barking.
Then the flat tires started. The first two were nails in the tires. I thought
it was unfortunate and uncanny that I’d run over the same patch of fallen nails
on the road twice. Third time, both back tires were flat, and both of
the caps were missing on the air valves. That’s when I knew that I was not
unlucky, but a victim of someone else’s plan.
Someone is trying to teach me a lesson, and by golly I
better listen. Except to whom. About what. Four whole days of my
life and all of my free tows from AAA have been used. I’ve paid for enough
patches in my tires. Except, I don’t think I’ve learned my lesson. I’m still
waiting. I’ve bought a bark collar for my dog. She wears it when I go to work.
I’ve called the landlord to see if she’s received any more complaints about my
dog. She says she hasn’t heard a thing. There’s obviously something I’m still
missing.
I hope they never confront me in person. I hope they never
leave a note on my front door. I hope they don’t contact my landlord so she can
handle the problem for them. Because why do it the right way? (If this
secret warden of hate were smarter they could have gotten rid of me and
my dog by now. Enough complaints lodged, and I’d have been fined. A few more
complaints on top of that, and I’d have been evicted.) So it must be about some
higher lesson I must learn. Some existential meaning that is a bridge between
time, space, and transportation that gets fucked in the wheels. A couple more
deflated tires, and it will truly make me understand that me, my dog, and her
barks are…overrated as neighbors? I
mean, how does this work? Here I am wondering whom I need to apologize to for
my dog disturbing the peace, and I’m the one who feels literally threatened.
The police report has been filed and I’m scared to look at
my tires every morning because I don’t know when this idiot is going to strike
again. Round and round we go. One of us is getting tired of trying to
handle this well.