Stress

Had a really amusing thought in the midst of an absolutely horrible Friday, but unfortunately I keep forgetting to tell anyone. Not that anyone would understand it, but I think it’s pretty funny.

Last Friday I had the awful stress of having to coordinate between my company’s insurance brokers, my wife, and my wife’s HR department to get her and my daughter off my medical benefits and onto her own through her company, due to financial reasons. Well, one financial reason, really; the costs of the family plan for my benefits were skyrocketing 640 percent per week beginning September 1st. With a baby on the way and my wife out for the next eight weeks at reduced pay, that just ain’t gonna cut it. Both sides were pressuring us to get this done as soon as possible, the day before preferable, but they made it seem to us that Friday was the immovable deadline.

So I’m calling this one and that one and that one and this one are calling me. At one point I actually had my wife on my cell and my insurance agent on the desk phone. Add in the daily grind of my department that’s purposely kept one body short to cut back on expenses, and I had quite a miserable day that Friday. Only the promise of the long holiday weekend kept me going I suppose.

I decided to make a break around one o’clock and headed out to the library in the town where I work. The promise of a writing project gave me impetus to get out a few research books. I took it as a pleasant diversion, and, despite twenty minutes’ fighting traffic both pedestrian and automotive, I hit the library and had a pleasant fifteen minutes searching down the books I needed.

Then, back out into the heat and humidity, racing back to my car to get back to work and clock back in before my allotted hour was up. Suddenly, I had the perfect image for my day. And, come to think of it, I think it sums up my life this whole long hot summer:

It’s as if Henry Rollins had been constantly an inch or two behind me, flexing and twitching mad, every minute of the day, shouting "STRESSSSSSSS!!!!" in my ear with that ragged throaty growl of his, whenever I least expected it.

That’s it. That’s my personal image of Stress. What I’ve been coping with for at least three months. Why I’m so ready to chuck it all in and join a monastery. Oh, wait, can’t – baby, wife, child, and all. House, mortgage, credit card debt, too. So I can’t throw in the towel. At least in a join-the-monastery kind of way. Need to figure something else out.

Since none of my six or seven readers know who Henry Rollins is, this picture sums him up nicely.





Now I’m chuckling in my car thinking about this as I’m driving back to work, trying to figure out how I’m going to remember to tell it to my wife, and how I’m going to explain who Henry Rollins is to her. When all of a sudden the car’s compartment is filled with this incredibly loud, incredibly surreal squealing noise. I thought for a split-second – “Is that my car making that noise?” – because it’s the sound of shrieking tires. But it’s not me, I’m not pressing the brakes, and I can’t see what’s happening, I’m actually halfway through an empty intersection.

Only it’s not empty. Motion catches my eyes. Peripherally, to my left, just a foot or so beyond my driver’s side door, is one of those flat-bed trucks that hauls the trailer with all the lawn mowers and such. It ran a stop sign and was now inches from plowing into me. I cut the wheel harder to the right, almost jumping up on the curb, and I see the driver of the truck cut his wheel to the left and skid to a stop. Heart palpitating, I complete my turn and wind up at a stoplight the next block up. I look into my rearview mirror, and I see the truck has pulled over. Something like six or eight guys get out and they all start unloading the trailer like nothing happened. The light turns green, and I head back to work.

Rollins: STRESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!


[By the way, my friend Rich and I saw Mr. Rollins with his eponymous band at the Limelight in NYC c. 1991 or 1992. The concert was phenomenal. The Limelight was (is?) a multi-level club that was converted from a church. Rich and I watched Henry from about twenty feet up, looking down on him, as he raged, wailed, prowled like a tiger in a cage, and threw patrons who dared challenge his machismo right off the stage. It was awesome … ]