2001-01-09 - 16:50:21
A locksmith is summoned, amidst moral qualms

Pardon the language, but I'm having a shitty day.

After I wrote the other entry this morning, I went on the mail-run. Lots of errands, lots of things to pick up. I got to my last stop, set my keys and my purse down inside the car, filled my arms with items to take inside the building, and forgot to pick the keys back up. (!@#$!@)

I called a friend I know who has a Triple-A Plus membership. Yes, I know, that's bad of me. But I was desperate, the nearest spare key is an hour's drive south, and a locksmith in this town will charge $40 that I don't have. She was asleep ... seems she didn't go to bed until 8AM ... and her husband answered. I asked him if he'd please ask her if she could be a little bit bad for me and drive over and pretend she was riding with me, so that AAA could unlock my car for free. She dithered for a minute, and I even promised to take her to dinner later. She decided it was Against Her Principles, and said NO.

Personally, I'm inclined to wonder whether she just didn't want to get up ... because I asked him to ask her, then, if she'd please just pick me up then and drive me and my boxes back to my office, so I wouldn't have to wait for the locksmith. She mumbled something, and he said it'd be 10 minutes.

Well, it was only five ... but she didn't come, either, she sent him. Riiight.

*10 minute pause*

Well, my feelings are a little less hurt now!! I got a call from Security; I called them earlier and they said they'd call back with the number of a locksmith. I wrote it down, then got the brilliant idea to call my mother again and ask for the State Farm insurance number ... just to make SURE my insurance didn't cover the unlock. Hip hip hurrah, they DO! So I just have to get a receipt from the locksmith, and take it in to the insurance office next time I'm in my parents' town!

So it doesn't matter that my friend turned me down, after all. I mean, I understand that she thought it was a bad thing to do, and I *know* it would be a bad thing to do, but ... I needed her, and felt very crushed when she didn't even take the phone from her husband to tell me herself; she relayed rejection through him.

The whole thing was vaguely evil of me. I am reminded of a quote from John Dryden's Journal: "He that once sins, like him that slides on ice, / Goes swiftly down the slippery way of vice." And then I laugh at myself; speeding tickets and cheating a bit on AAA aren't anything more than the little tiny white wrongs everyone does all the time. And then I frown again, and think, Yes, but it's still wrong, regardless of whether it's "only human" or not.

So I can't really be mad at her, even though it's natural.

Silly, silly Shell. (And now all my readers will think I have a stick up my @## and am a puritanical no-fun type in real life. Quite the contrary. It's just that I worry about these things in retrospect ... while I'd like to be a Good Person, I'm very aware of how often I fall short, and how much I sometimes enjoy the falling-short part).

Anyway. One of the boxes I picked up today did, in fact, contain "A Storm of Swords." Talk about ironic ... I just got done griping earlier about how it wasn't here yet. So the day ain't all bad. *almost-grin*