I’m not that strong
I’m not sure about you, but when I talk to people either locally or somewhere else about how difficult it is to just live here right now, the normal response I get is “Well your strong enough to handle it”. Well you know what? I’m not. I’m sick of everything. I’m totally freaking out.
Sunday morning a friend is heading to church. I don’t join her, just not my thing. But she goes every Sunday and more power to her.
She’s heading to church and of course she gets a flat tire. No biggie. It’s the third one in three days. We have found a “secret” tire fixing place (don’t ask, I’m not telling ANYONE where it is) that basically treats us like family now. We are on a first name basis because they have seen us what, 17-18 times since the storm? Yeah it’s like that round here. Especially if you’re made of rubber.
Anyway, the tire blows on the I-10 ramp near Claiborne. Cell phone rings, I need help, flat tire, blah blah blah. I’ve clearly heard this more than once. I head out to help. Of course the spare is flat (ROFLMAO, sorry can’t help that- imagine a spare tire that’s NOT flat in New Orleans). It’s not about the tire anyway so get to the point.
I get the flat off, we hop in my vehicle and head to our “secret” tire fixin place. Takes them twenty minutes tops to get the two tires fixed and we head back to her car.
We’ll of course, the car is gone. We have cars that have been sitting on the side of the road for 9 months that we can’t move but we can get this one. That only has three tires. The one still sitting on a car jack. The one with the flashing turn signals.
Of course, she freaks out. Which in turn makes me freak out. A 38 year old balding white dude and a 25 year old black woman on the side of the interstate where a car sat just twenty minutes ago at the end of our rope. I’m sure some passing motorists enjoyed the show.
We both calm down. I know no one could of stole the damn thing, a car with three wheels, although I guess crazier things have happened since the storm. We start making the calls and track it down.
This is when I start questioning my strength to deal with this crap anymore. The I-10 police or whatever the hell they are called tells us that “the car was towed because it was abandoned”. Abandoned? Say what? The freakin flashers were still on! How many “abandoned” cars leave the flashers on? And did I say it took us TWENTY MINUTES to go and come back? TWENTY MINUTES is abandonment?
I can’t take it anymore. Come back home, come rebuild, come restore the city. Then when you get back, we’re gonna stick it to you anyway that we can. Have a problem? We’re gonna make it worse. Working hard to rebuild? Guess what, your not working hard enough and we need money so we’re gonna stick it YOU. Having your own financial problems? That’s too bad cause we need YOUR money worse than you do so we will work to not clean up the city cause we can’t get money out of the “displaced”. We’re gonna do whatever we can to make it more difficult for you to stay here. We want you here as long as we can screw you over to get some cash in the city’s coffers. Can those of us who have RETURNED not be viewed as a walking dollar bill?
I’m not this strong. Is anyone?
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Ahmen, brother.
Wasn’t it like that pre-Katrina?
What a maddening thing to happen. This seems like a trick by the tow truck company. For a vehicle to be abandoned, I’m pretty sure it has to be stickered for some amount of time. Pre-K when I saw broken-down cars on the side of the interstate, they all had big orange stickers with the date of the notice on them. 20 minutes??
Call Six on Your Side or some organization like that. A week or so ago I heard something similar with someone’s car being towed from in front of his house. It wasn’t abandoned, and it was never stickered (for lack of a better term) either. This is just plain wrong.
Good luck with everything. These are very hard times to be living in New Orleans.
Know what?
It DOES suck. And lord knows I’m long since tired of it. My previous posts have shown that.
…but the key is just to keep showing up. It’s a Zen experience after a while.
Zyn and the Art of Living in Orleans Parish.
heh heh, zen. There isn’t the slightest thing zen about being here. The rubble messes with the flow of my chi and there’s a horrible vibe everywhere.
Ahh, Grasshopper, but you gain more knowledge from having
the ability to centre’ oneself in completely
chaotic conditions…take Nagin’s purple head for instance,
if you can meditate on that you will always be
calm under pressure.
And this event is to be known as “Zyn” from this nanosecond forward.
Thanks for the enlightenment.
Laurie
Not for nothing, but my brother-in-law says that if one more person tells him, “God, never gives you more than you can handle,” he’s going to punch them dead in the face.
I think its time we all worked on our individual Feng-shui.
I too question my strength in the here and now which I never did before. It’s doubly hard when you try to explain it to people outside the city. Great post, thanks.