Imprudent: http://encarta.msn.com/thesaurus_561590899/thoughtless.html
Negligent. Foolish. Heedless. Careless. Stupid. My actions last night are thus truthfully described. Awful, awful thinking!! (Or LACK thereof).
So picture this: imagine it's saturday night (live), 9PM ,you're at your apartment, you have a hamper full of dirty clothes waiting to be laundered, you have a 10:30AM business-related flight tomorrow morning from which you plan to return a week and a half later, and you've booked a friendly SuperShuttle van to pick you up at 7AM. But you don't want to do laundry just yet - oh no, YOU want to go out clubbing tonight! And why not? It's saturday night!! (live) And you're going to dance your sweat off tonight while showing off your favorite gray shirt, and you just CAN'T go on your trip without your favorite shirt, oh no... Gotta take your shirt with you. So yeah, laundry must be done AFTER the clubbing.
So you go clubbing. You reach downtown by 11:30, find a parking space on the roof level of a 5-story building, and start hounding for a dancefloor surrounded by a loud bass beat and pretty dancing girls. Your favorite local disco-bar is sadly pounding with your non-favorite rap-style music, and your second-favorite bar Prague has a rather long line of people waiting to get in. So you reach Qua - fancier, more expensive, but with better disco/reggaeton music in the air. You step onto the dancefloor, get in touch with the music, and then you dance. You dance your DONKEY off. You step, you skip, you flail, you bend, you swing, you hump, you jump, you scream. For about an hour. Sweaty and footsore, you then walk off to a much-emptier Prague and repeat, but with a dancing pole.
You reach your high-up car in the high-up parking lot with no elevator OR stair access. You back up your car while turning the wheel and WHAM! you feel/listen a loud collision: your car hitting a very useless-looking concrete bar in the middle of the parking lot. You woefully imagine your car's bent chassis, your now-unopenable door, and the 4-digit amount it'll take to fix it. You step out, check your car, and miraculously find out that your car has not a dent in it! (Not more than it already had, anyway). You stare, you wonder, and then you notice the front left wheel sharply angled toward the concrete culprit, lightly smeared in gray, and a big rubbery-looking black smudge on the concrete bar. A smile of relief on your face is followed by a grateful laugh and a sincere thank you to the front left wheel for taking one for the team.
Then at 2:30AM you're back at your apartment. You dutifully gather all of your clothes, you add your sweat-dripping dancing attire to it, and you put it all in the washer. You wonder what to do while your clothes get washed. You eat some apple sauce, wait a bit, and then you lay on the rug to check your email.
And then suddenly your phone rings a familiar ringtone - a call! Unknown number! Who could it be? You answer: "Hello. This is an automated message from Super Shuttle. We are calling to remind you that your shuttle driver will be arriving at your stop in 10 minutes...". You look at the time on your cellphone - it's 6:50AM. The shuttle would be here at 7AM.
So picture that. What would you do? I don't what'd you do, but I'll tell you what I did. First, my body jumped to standing position in a heartbeat. Then my mind raced. "OK, I'm not ready for my trip. My bags are not packed, most of my clothes are wet in the washer, and I still need to shower."
Boy, did I hurry! Possibilities flew: "Maybe my clothes are not that wet and I can put some on." I checked, nope... very wet indeed. "OK, how about I ignore the shuttle, dry my clothes, fold them, pack my bags, and then hurriedly drive to the airport?" I did some zap arithmetic: 3.5 hours for my flight, 1 hour for the dryer to dry my clothes, 20 minutes to fold them, 30 minutes to drive to the airport, only about 1.5 hours early on the airport... hmmm... risky... and I'd already paid for the shuttle... and I didn't want to ALSO pay parking - so I passed. "OK then... I'll just take whatever's NOT wet!" I checked... only a couple of non-plain-white-cotton-t-shirts laying around, and I was going on a week-and-a-half trip. Nope, not viable. "OK so... I'll just take my wet clothes and dry them when I get to the hotel." Now that was a plan. I got two empty Walmart plastic bags, stuffed them with the nicest-looking and most-easily-available clothes I could yank out of the washer, tied them up, and threw them into my suitcase.
Then I thought "OK, I still smell". So I showered as fast and completely as I could, dried as best as I could, and then I thought "I have NO dry pants to wear!". Darn, oh well, it's a good thing I have a brother, I thought. I grabbed a pair of jeans from his closet and put them on. I looked at the time on the microwave. 6:59AM. "Oh no!", I thought. Hmmm, well... even SuperShuttle drivers are usually late. Yeah, I still have time. So, breakfast. Apple sauce! I poured half a cup of apple sauce into my cup and devoured it in what seemed like 2 seconds. And then I filled it with water so the residues wouldn't dry up and smell bad later. Brushed my teeth, found a shirt to put on, found some dry socks, found my glasses, unplugged my cellphone charger, packed my power outlet, grabbed my bags, put my shoes on, turned the lights off, walked outside, and locked the door at 7:17.
The concept of synergy crossed my mind when, 20 seconds after leaving the apartment, I saw the shuttle drive up close. My mind was still fast reeling with the moment's excitement - I wasn't sure if I was dreaming. But I'd made it. With barely any dry clothes in my bags, but I made it.
I started this entry in the airport lobby, but now I'm at the hotel, near the north border of the Mississippi state. And the hotel did have a laundry room, and I did put my clothes in the dryer, and they didn't get any mildew as I was told, and everything turned out all right.
But the point is - my decisions last night were imprudent. Reckless. Careless. Negligent. Stupid. I should've done my laundry at 9PM, finished folding clothes and packing bags at midnight, went to sleep, spent 7 full hours resting, had time for a complete and healthy breakfast, cut out my anxiety about wet clothes in my bags during the whole trip here, had a much less tired body today, and saved my car's front left wheel from a harsh bump into some senseless concrete bar on a rooftop parking lot last night.
It is to be noted, however, that I'm extracting good out of this risky experience. A moderately entertaining anecdote for a blog entry, plus a couple of lessons to be learned:
- Be very careful when backing up your car on an unlit rooftop parking lot.
- If you plan on going clubbing the night before an important trip, make sure your laundry and bags are ready before you do so. And don't worry about your favorite shirt getting dirty - you can still take it with you and wash it during the trip.
- Wake up on time.
- Practice prudence lest you don't mind risk and stress.
No comments:
Post a Comment