Utopian Day 3

I awaken to the soft rain falling on the window sill of the bedroom window. I love the smell of the rain covered street. I lay there and soak it in right before noticing that I have overslept this morning. The clock reads 9:30 and the store is suppose to open in a half hour. I skip the shower and throw on my clothes and dash out the door.

The light shower I appreciated from the warm confines of my bed is rapidly turning into the downpour soaking me throughout. In my hastiness to run out the door, I figured an umbrella would slow me down. I turn my usually mild walk into a winded jog. I manage to get to the store just in time to shed my coat and unlock the door.

I am opening by myself today. Shae has her Tuesday/Thursday college schedule and at this point, I have no backup for her. I didn’t think I would need it. My poor planning will make today a bad day. After unlocking the door and let about 10 people enter, a rather large man with a notebook walks into the store. He walks directly to me to state my delivery has arrived.

That’s right. I am staffing the bookstore by myself and the delivery of the new kids section books and equipment have arrived. How in the world am I going to unload the truck AND man the register? I guess, it is time to call in reinforcements.

The other end plays this wonderfully light and airy voice “What?!”

“Hi Honey, I have a problem…”

“So do I, your daughter has decided it is OK to punch the teacher. I have to head to the principals office now and try to keep her from being suspended.”

“Oh…so there is no way you could come stand at the register huh?”

“What do you think?”

“Um…You take care of the school issue. I will talk to you later.”

This is not my day. I was almost willing to let ANYONE come and stand by the register so I can unload the truck. I really need to bring on a backup for Shae. I decided to call my neighbor Curt. After all, most of his work is in the evening so maybe he can give me a hand. Curt owns the theater.

Curt wearily answers the phone and informs me he can help me out. He will be here in about 30 minutes. Good news…finally. Now all I need to do is keep the driver from dropping all of my stuff off on the sidewalk and driving away.

After Curt arrives, I head back to the truck and start taking inventory of what needs to go to the basement. I continues to rain rather heavily so, I need to make it quick. The elevator is set for the back supply entrance so I don’t have to keep calling it. First off the truck is the big screen TVs. This shouldn’t be a problem, load them into the elevator and head to the basement. Well, except for the fact that they weigh a ton, it was not too bad. I don’t think I broke anything.

Next come the smaller boxes. I really don’t want to make any more trips to this truck so I loaded the elevator to the top, signed the receipt, and pressed the down button. Do you have any idea WHY they place a weight restriction on elevators? Apparently it is to allow them to open the doors back up.

I am stuck, in my own elevator, with my own inventory packed around me like a pickle in a jar of pickles. Not good. What do you do when you are stuck in the elevator? Push the red button.

Curt slowly meanders (well it felt slow to me) to the elevator door and screams “You Stuck?!”

As I kiss the front door I respond, “In more ways than one! Call someone!”

Curt places the call and the fire trucks race around the corner to my store. The fire station is one block away. They just need a reason to turn on the sirens.

After the firemen manage to open the basement elevator door and extract me from the boxes, I thank them and wish them well. After all of this…and with the elevator temporarily out of commission, I decide to get a drink. As I head upstairs, I notice the store is rather full, and with Curt behind the register stands the Queen and Avery.

The Queen is staring at me like “you idiot” while inside I know she has to be laughing her ass off. It is at this point I am nearly ready to close the store and try again tomorrow. I thank Curt for his help and he heads over to the theater. Not much longer and my sister will be here.

After emptying out the elevator, Jan arrives and I am more than thrilled to leave for the day. It is bowling night and I am in need of something good to happen. I will deal with getting the elevator to work again tomorrow.

I am off to the bowling alley. The bowling alley is actually on the edge of town about a mile from my house. It is not huge or fancy, it is just a bowling alley. But it has leagues and even though I don’t bowl well, they like my handicap.

Unfortunately, we are bowling against VJACK. VJACK is one of the better bowling teams that tend to whoop on everyone they are up against. This weekend is our weekend. I knew that the way this day had gone so far, there was no possible way we could beat them.

My first game, I bowled fair. I bowled my average and the team as a whole only lost by 35 pins. Not bad considering who we were up against.

The second game however, we were pummeled. There was absolutely no way we were going to win the series and by losing the second game by 70 pins, it was possible they would make us take off our bowling shirts and leave right then.

However, the third game went a little differently. VJACK was bowling very well. As a team, they were running about 50 pins above average. But I had bowled 6 strikes in 6 frames. This was not making VJACK happy at all and the team began the heckling campaign to have me break my streak.

Eighth frame and still the strike were coming. Now I stand at the bottom of the lane in the tenth frame looking at the pins with my ball in hand. People have started to congregate around to see if I could really pull off a 300 game. If so, this would be my first and more than likely, my last.

As I release, I can hear the ball holes hitting the boards as it heads toward the pocket…STRIKE! A loud cheer comes from behind me and I prepare for the next throw.

I can feel my palms start to sweat with all of the pressure coming on my shoulders. I release the next ball and can feel it as soon as I release it…STRIKE! I keep my emotion as calm as possible. I know this will require everything I have to keep from just fainting on the lanes.

My thoughts are: don’t cross the line, second board from the right, shake hands, stop sweating dammit. I can feel my heart beating in my chest. I am focusing as much as humanly possible and at the same time…I have to pee.

I have to pee. I take a minute to quickly run to the bathroom and pee, wash my hand from all of the sweat and come back to the lane. There it is. Ten pins keep me from the perfect game. I step up and make my approach.

When I release, the ball lets off a pop. “That’s not good” I think. The ball still heads for the pocket but I am less than hopeful. As it hit, I see the 5 pin standing there until the 7 pin comes across and…STRIKE! WOOOHOOOO! It doesn’t get any better than this.

After all of the congratulations, I head home. Today, was an excellent day.