I love Rat.
So, anyway, reflecting back on my bad days, I settled on one story in particular. It isn't a bad day, as much as it is a series of unfortunate events.
A few years ago, I worked at a radio station in southern Illinois. I did some news reporting. One of the beats I ended up doing was the city council for Alma. Now, there are less than 400 people in Alma. The big news around Alma when I left was that they were going to get a convenience store. Not a gas station, mind you. But a convenience store. Small town. So few people lived in this town and so few went to their city council (technically village trustees) meetings that at the end the trustees would ask the people in the crowd if they had anything to bring to the council. I think barking dogs was a primary concern.
However, barking dogs was not why I was sent to this town. No, no. There was a village trustee that believed that the mayor and possibly other trustees were stealing money from the village. Juicy stuff! Of course, this was denied, but the story was there. Alma-ites were excited. Seriously, 20 people showed up to their trustee meetings while this was going on.
Now, the mayor of Alma (who would resign at the end of this by writing "I resign" on a sheet of yellow legal paper) did not take kindly to these accusations and he didn't really like answering questions about them. I understand that, but man, he got angry about answering these questions. I got to ask him questions. He and I did not really like one another. (I should note that I don't know if the accusations were true. Nothing ever happened with it, but the guy was just unpleasant.)
While this is going on, I was doing some home renovation. I owned a home and would do some projects now and again. Not often, because I'm not a big tool person. So, it was of little surprise that when I bought a ceiling fan that I could not figure out how to install it. So, I called Lowe's and asked them to send someone to install it.
That weekend, I went to St. Louis with some friends. We were going to take in a Cardinals game and partake in some drunken revelry. I was in the middle of doing just that when my phone rang. And to my utter disbelief, it was the mayor of Alma. Only, he was not the Mayor of Alma in this capacity. No, no, he was an electrician. I didn't know that the mayor of Alma was an electrician, but he was and he would be coming on Wednesday to install my ceiling fan.
I was a bit nervous about this installation for a few days. I mean, this guy didn't like me. How would it go over with him in my house? I had basically been paid to piss this guy off (well, not really, it just ended up that way).
It turned out to be not all that bad. He came, installed the fan, and bitched about the people who made the accusations. I had to endure a bit of criticism, but hey, I was getting a ceiling fan out of the deal. And the fan never fell down on me, despite me being paranoid about that for a few days.
It was a strange series of coincidences that led to this. I'd call it serendipitous, but that seems cheerful. But, I endured through it. And really, just to tie it into the course, I endured by doing nothing. He came to the house, I stood there, listened to his rant, and occasionally turned on the light switch to test if things were working.
That didn't mean that doing nothing wasn't excruciating. But sometimes, it is all we can do.
Its been a bad day
Please don't take a picture,
Alan
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