Friday the Thirteenth

It’s your story. Feel free to hit ‘em with a plot twist any moment. Author Unknown

Friday the 13^th came a few weeks late for us this September past.

Now, I am not one of those who associates Friday the Thirteenth with bad luck or portents of doom. If anything, those days have been filled with blessings and all sorts of good things over the years, so I’ve never given them much thought. Besides, I don’t ponder life’s happenstances in terms of luck – good OR bad.

Life is, and we take it as it comes. If there is a correlation to be found, it is generally that we get what we expect. If we expect bad things to happen, they do. If we expect good things to happen, they do. Some of that has to do with seeing what we expect to see.

Some people look at clouds and foresee rain. Others look at clouds and see dragons or bunnies. I admire those who perceive the fanciful in cloud formations. Rain and snow are real enough for me; I’ll take fluffy bunnies and wonky doggies any day of the week!

The other day, though, was another matter. Barb-the-love-of-my-life and I went down to the local Department of Licensing to convert our drivers licenses to the new and improved “Enhanced” licenses so that we will be able to board planes or travel into Canada from time to time. The local DOL was virtually empty, so we were called up immediately. I presented my documents to the smiling, pleasant clerk, and within just a few minutes, I paid my fee and was finished.

Barb, on the other hand, was stymied. Since her birth name differed from her married name, she needed a copy of the marriage license before her clerk could proceed. We drove home, grabbed the marriage license out of our files and returned with it to the DOL, and presented it to the clerk with whom Barb had been working. The clerk admired the document but told us it wasn’t acceptable as it wasn’t a “certified” copy.

I pointed out to the clerk that not only was it an original document, but it had allowed us to make several children! She apologized, spoke with her supervisor, and informed us (with some regret) that we needed a “certified” copy of the marriage license issued by the county in which we were married.

Now, we could have gotten all hot and bothered, but the law is what it is, and while I may (personally) think it truly stupid that all the documents we brought to prove we are who we are were insufficient for obtaining the document we were seeking, so-be-it; we’d move along and send away for what we need. We’ll return when we have it (probably a week or so) and that’ll be that.

We then left there and went to a pharmacy to have passport photos taken (as our passports had expired and were in need of renewing). The clerk pulled out his camera, sent me to where I needed to stand, and – nothing. The camera battery had died and he wouldn’t be able to take any pictures for at least a half an hour. Uff da!

So we wandered over to the pharmacy counter to turn in some old, expired prescription drugs, for we were told they had a disposal/return service. Nope. Wrong again. Not only did they have dead batteries in their cameras, they weren’t part of the drug-return program advertised on television, either. Uff da x2!

We left the store, got back into the car, looked at each other, and I said, “Well, it looks like Friday the Thirteenth came a couple of weeks late for us.”

To say that life throws curves is an old, tired cliché, but it’s true. Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed, but when things need doing, there’s no use putting them off, and if challenges arise, we simply face them, address them, and when finished, we move on. It’s called “acting like grown-ups.”

If the worse thing to happen on a given day is a dead battery or bureaucratic snafu, that’s not bad. We have the basic necessities of life – and more. We’ve got clouds. We can see rain, or we can see dragons. The choice is always ours in this, our valley.