Three Bad Things in a tree? How can THAT be?

Do “bad things” happen “in threes?”

I can vouch for the fact that at least minor “bad things” can happen in any damn number they want to. I can burn my mouth, overdraw my checking, miss a bus, drop my milkshake, forget to do a household chore, stub my toe and bump my elbow (simultaneously) all in one relatively short period of time. Then, for no apparent reason, I can go weeks without any minor bad things happening and then BAM! I leave my ID badge at home and have to go through the trouble of getting a temporary badge.

You can say that having a temporary badge isn’t really a “bad thing” but I’m here to say that, where I work, it is. Anyone with a temporary badge must make sure that someone that has an issued badge has the temp’s paperwork and the two cannot get more than 10 feet away from each other. Imagine entering an area where you suddenly have a ten-foot leash attached to you. It’s bad enough having to go to the bathroom in a pair, at least as a grown man, but its even worse if only one of you is a smoker. You have to either beg or follow your host to go outside whilst either he or you chuffs down a Camel.

Okay…chuffing down a Camel really sounds like an Enumclaw term. While my apologies go out to those Enumclawians (?) that were in no way connected to the horrid incident that took place out there, the fact remains that Enumclaw is now infamous for that reason. After all, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I say “Chernobyl?” I’ll bet you a buttered biscuit that you didn’t answer “Home of the 1996 Summer Olympics.” Not that Chernobyl ever hosted ANY Olympics. Not that anyone wants to be his or her own nightlight, but it’s a safe bet that you mentioned something about a nuclear power plant. You see what I mean?

I’m starting to get a little suspicious about the major bad things, however. My wife contracted Pertussis, cut and broke her finger at a restaurant, and then proceeded to throw her back out. So, every time she coughs, her finger throbs and her back muscles try to murder her. Slowly. With a red-hot poker and a pair of long-handled pinchy things. Not only THAT, but she can’t knit until her finger heals, damn it all.

Now we take my example. I’m not entirely sure that I had Pertussis, but I do know that I’ve been hacking up lung-fulls of stuff that could hold bricks together. Coughing over a period of time makes my temples try and escape from under my skin. This is really bad news for my brain and it knows that, so it convinces my skin to keep my skull intact, against my somewhat addled wishes.

Earlier this week, my car was rear-ended with me in it. He hit me hard enough to throw my already-stopped car into the car in front of me. Strangely enough, the car in front of me (a nice maroon mini-SUV) actually drove off when the light changed moments later. Luckily, the car behind me didn’t take off, too. That might have had something to do with the fact that his radiator had just about become his dashboard. Don’t ask me how a 2-door hatchback Geo Metro manages to completely destroy the front end of an 80’s le Baron. I could actually drive my vehicle to the side of the road and indeed 20 miles more to get home. I also drove it another 35 miles to a rebuild shop to get it checked out. HIS car, however, barely managed to get to the side of the road and had to be towed away. I completely thought that the only damage to my car was a bent hood from the car in front of me.

The rebuild shop proved me wrong.

They lifted up the floorboards in the back and showed me where the frame had buckled about 3 inches. My little economically sound car is totaled. Not only that, but a side effect to getting rear-ended that hard is a little-known debilitating injury commonly referred to as “whiplash.” I steadfastly refused to see a doctor knowing that, because I am so laid back that La-Z-Boy chairs recline on ME, my injury was minor. I turned out to be correct. Luckily.

So, I ended up with (1) a head-rupturing cough extravaganza and (2) an accordion-shaped car. What is the third thing? It hasn’t really come my way yet. I’m looking over my shoulder and under the bed for it, trust me. I can’t really count the fact that a semi truck took out our cable and Internet for a day because that mostly impacted my kids and wife. I can’t count getting laid off because in my line of work it’s part of how things run. I get laid off after every job I do. Help me out here, folks. What terrible thing do you think would fit in nicely with the predecessors that I have talked about?



Side note: Looking up Chernobyl and finding a story about someone that took a motorcycle trip through the area and took pictures shocked me. It’s awesome to try and comprehend the damage that incident caused for that region for CENTURIES to come. Check it out: Chernobyl.