Slightly Cursed

Time.

Ticking away, faster each year. Too much gone by; too little left ahead. Relentless.

Life is a series of epiphanies. Like anything else, you have good ones and bad ones. But when we finally face that moment–when our vision clears, and pieces of the puzzle snap and lock into place in our heads–and suddenly we know there’s nothing left for us to do except take action and valiantly face what’s coming.

You can look back and say, “I was a fool! I wasted too much time!” But was any of it really wasted? The very concept demeans us. I prefer to think of it as time needed to learn and grow.

Everyone has a journey to complete. Birth, death, marriage, divorce, endings, new beginnings, change of any kind. It’s all cyclical. Our paths converge and diverge with others’ as we complete smaller cycles of our lives within the grander circle of birth to death. With every path we cross or join, lessons are both taken and given. Every experience is designed to teach, and to learn.

Sometimes, we cross another’s path and move on, only to converge with them again years later. Maybe the timing wasn’t right. There were lessons to be learned before the two paths could come together as one. Is the time wasted? Is it a test of patience bringing us one step closer to enlightenment?

There’s a right time for everything. That thing, that job, that lover. It may not have been right for you ten or twenty years ago, but it might be exactly what you need tomorrow. Maybe you knew what the right choice was all that time ago, but you were afraid or blinded by distractions. Or not ready. Perhaps the lessons in between were required first. Patience. Another lesson from Time?

We take our experiences with us as we forge our way through time. They are us, in part, in whole, inextricable. Time’s never wasted, no matter how trivially spent, no matter how successful the final outcome. We learn to use it wisely, to make the most of it. We learn when to break old cycles and start new ones. We move with it. Changing. Growing. It mends our broken hearts and softens the memories that cut deepest.

Time is a gift. One that should be used with wisdom and care. Time can’t be stolen, but it can be lost. Time is that most precious of commodities, valued most when none is left. When it’s lost it’s gone forever, but the memories and the lessons learned are always with us. Defining us. Making us who we are.

written by vic

The signs were all around me; the Fates were fed up. Unfortunately, I never notice these things until I’m either smack in the middle of, or recovering from, a Cursed Event.

Sign Number One: It was 6:00am, I was on my way to Los Angeles for a much-needed vacation, and I wasn’t coffeed up. That’s always a mistake; it makes the world hate me.

Checking in the night before, I’d printed out my boarding passes specifically so the system would know my bags were coming. That’s really the only way you can ensure they’ll lose them properly.

Sign Number Two: I’d followed the rules, checking my bags with 45 minutes to spare. The attendant directed me to gate A5, handed me my claim check for the bags, and I made a beeline toward security.

The feeder line was wrapped around no less than a dozen bends, and the TSA people looked irritated about being awake. Sleepy, crabby TSA people indicate that not only are the gods mad at you, but so is the Federal government. And the Feds are way more scary.

Despite being patted down and scanned twice with a wand, the guy in front of me kept setting off the alarm; I decided he was related to Wolverine. This cost me another five minutes. Then I had to run my bags through the scanners twice, and for no particularly obvious reason. Five more minutes. Luckily, they didn’t take me in the back room for the full treatment like they did to a friend of mine at Kennedy airport.

Sign Number Three: I got through security and did the OJ run to gate A5, as instructed. Gate A5 was going to Philly. I was going to Los Angeles’ LAX. I and my two exceedingly unwieldy (and heavy) bags were then directed to a different gate, on the other end of the concourse.

Thanks to Tae Kwan Do night before, I needed to work my stiff legs and arms anyway, so the run helpfully and efficiently provided me with more exercise. Doing things efficiently is another bad omen; it means the universe will balance it out with some kind of needless churn.

With 11 minutes to departure, I tried to run, lurching with the momentum of my carry on bags: an enormous laptop-backpack filled every gadget known to Man, and a duffel bag containing random clothes and an extra pair of shoes for when the airline lost my luggage (I’d thought ahead this time). Lucky for me, my calf muscles cramped up, hobbling me.

When I got to the gate, there was one person still waiting to board. Good thing I was there 45 minutes early so I could board the plane last!

Sign Number Four was sporting a pair of shiny black Ropers, shorts that doubled as butt-floss, and enough silicone to pay Dow’s legal fees for a decade. She was the love child of Daisy Duke and Joey-from-Friends’ LA manager. My bags weren’t getting any lighter, yet I waited patiently as she blocked the aisle of the plane. Until I realized why: she was unable to properly to match her boarding pass seat number with the numbers on the aisle. Maybe the different fonts threw her?

Eventually, a nice flight attendant came along to do Daisy’s thinking for her and found her a seat. Daisy stepped back into the row, ass in front of her seat, planetoid breasts threatening to suffocate the poor guy trapped within the seat next to her, and stared vacantly into space.

Daisy’s pink, glittery bag sat in the aisle, untouched; then she turned and stared expectantly at the flight attendant. The attendant stared back. No one spoke. This left me stuck in the aisle, bags digging ravines into my shoulders, and I waited nearly 2 entire minutes for the ridiculous staring contest to end before I’d had enough.

That’s when Earthquake Girl, my alter-ego, took over. Deftly twisting my hips and shrugging my right shoulder, I kicked the big, pink, glittery bag out of my way and tossed out a look that dared its owner to speak. I’m not sure if it was because I’d subconsciously used my duffel bag as a secret weapon or if it was the pair of freakishly large, blimp-like objects embedded in her chest that did her in, but with a tiny gasp of surprise, Daisy Duke toppled over.

Arms akimbo, and nearly bludgeoning the guy still cowering beneath her torso, she looked frantically at the flight attendant. I think Daisy expected her to arrest me and take me to the back room for that semi-private, personal violation I’d avoided earlier.

Somewhere, someone snickered, lifting my mood a bit. Glaring at Daisy one last time for good measure, I stalked off toward my seat at the back of the plane, hiding my rush and trying not to laugh.

I had a back row all to myself where, for the next 2 hours, I watched as three strange men several rows in front of me took turns hanging over each other to gape out the window. Despite it being only 7:15am, one of them was drunk and sweaty. (It’s always 5:00 somewhere!) Eventually, they stopped falling over each other and passed out.

From that point, everything was great. Until about 20 minutes after everyone ate. Lucky for me, they’d already run out of food by the time they got to the back of the plane. But it wasn’t the line of people waiting to use the toilet that bothered me; it was the gas that made the experience unpleasant. And for some reason, everyone waiting to use the toilet wanted to talk to me, as if the talk-to-me-and-die look on my face wasn’t enough indication to leave me alone. Are you seeing a trend here? Yup. This was Sign Number Five.

Being rude, my usual response to unwanted attention, wasn’t working with this crowd. Probably because none of us could escape. In a last, desperate attempt to keep the never ending line of farting people from trying to talk to me, I slipped my Level 2 Happy Bunny® shirt (”Your anger makes me happy”) on over the one I was wearing.

(Note to self: farts on a plane last much longer than you’d expect.)

We arrived at LAX pretty much on time (Sign Number Six), and I went straight to baggage claim. Apparently, despite the fact that I (and my luggage) were all checked in together, at the same time, one of my bags had taken a later flight. While waiting an hour and a half at the airline’s business office for it to arrive, I examined the bag that made it with me. It wasn’t on a different continent; something had to be wrong!

Sure enough, my name was misspelled.

It all evens out though. The universe spent the next two weeks getting even.

written by vic