The morning - frantic by nine and creeping toward chaos by ten thanks to a late running and ill tempered doctor, a waiting room full of anxious patients, and the absence of two nurses - exploded into a perfect storm just after eleven when the credit card machine crashed mid swipe. Apparently I was disagreeable with the tech support staff - when they implied I should've called earlier, I growled at them that nothing had been wrong earlier - when they offered to send a new terminal, I snarled that the current one had been new in November, that it was barely March, and that in my day, things were actually built to last - and when they transferred me to a different department and left me on hold for a full ten minutes before walking me through an agonizing, twenty-five minute, key by key repair process, I was furious and made no attempt to hide it.
An abacus would be more efficient! I snapped when we were finally done and when the young woman on the other end of the line asked A what? I suggested, not kindly, that she look it up and slammed the receiver down in disgust. Lunchtime came and I fled. And it might've ended there. I might easily have made the drive home, spent fifteen or twenty minutes with the dogs and returned with my perspective and good humor restored. It might've been just an ordinary workday. All except for the angels part, of course.
At the intersection, I pulled up one lane over and a car length behind a pickup truck full of angels - they were made of poster board, like Christmas decorations, with white mesh wings and gold halos. Some held glittery trumpets and all were stacked like cordwood in the truck bed. I hadn't had time to finish wondering where a truck full of Christmas angels might be headed on a windy March day when an old, VW van, badly in need of a paint job and some serious body work, came from out of nowhere and slammed into the rear of the waiting pickup - there was a grinding crunch of metal on metal and suddenly there were angels everywhere - they flew upwards and backwards and sideways, some landed back in the truck bed while others bounced off hoods of cars. They floated to the sidewalks and the median, the bottom layer spilled pitifully out into the street between the two vehicles, one snagged itself on a car antenna and hung there in midair. The two drivers, both trying hard to be angry, no easy task when it's raining angels, exchanged information and took names of witnesses while others left their vehicles and began collecting the poster board figures. Someone on a cell phone called the police and as the damage to the van and pick up had been slight, traffic soon resumed. As for the angels, some were dirty and dented, a few would need wing work and the one who had been snagged on the antenna had lost her halo but there were no fatalities. I still had no idea where they were headed or why but it didn't seem important - I was sure there must be a deeper meaning to this odd celestial encounter, a message of some kind. I pondered this as I drove the rest of the way home but all I could think of was that it's best not to travel with unsecured angels in the back of a pickup truck.
Later I decided it might just be a reminder to me to lighten up, chill out, and breathe - and that angels are everywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment