A Series of Unfortunate Events. 

That’s the best way to described how things have been lately.  It apparently isn’t enough to have a lockdown, be isolated, not be able to dance or do any of the things I would normally do to socialize.  There just had to be more.

It started out with backing into my boss’s new car in the parking lot.   To be more precise, the president of the company.  It has been 25 years since anything like that has happened. 

There was also the gum infection that led to emergency surgery in the dentist’s office.  I’m calling it surgery because a scalpel was involved along with about 15 shot of lidocaine.  You see, my system dissipates local anesthetics rather quickly.  I lost track of how many times he had to re-numb me.

Next up was the car.  Mind you I’ve had this car for 11 years and almost 250,000 miles.  It was getting to the point where it needed struts, brakes and who knows what else.  Long story short, I was driving back from my son’s house and when the front end went haywire.  It was undriveable at highway speeds.  I got off the exit, found the closest Mazda dealer and was able to make it there.

Somehow, in the middle of all of the mayhem, there was a silver lining in every cloud.  The miracles started to appear.  God miracles, the kinds of things that just can’t be explained by natural means.  Let me explain.

I was only an hour out so my son was able to come and get me.  Silver lining.  I spent another night at his place.

I had been pondering what kind of car I wanted for many months.  Black, Mazda CX-5, front wheel drive, a 2020 to get 0% financing.  Yup, that would be the one.  The chances of that happening?  Next to zero. 

I woke up the following morning at 6am and just for grins and giggles decide to see if the car I wanted was even possible.  After about 10 minutes, there it was…the silver lining, a black 2020 Mazda CX 5 with front wheel drive.  And it was at the closest Mazda dealer from my son’s house.  And it was the only 2020 CX5 left at that dealership.

The only bummer is that I had 249,857 miles on my old car.  I really wanted to get to 250,00!

It is important to note that it is very hard to find front wheel CX5s in the north east US.  Everybody wants all wheel drive because of the weather.  If you go south, they are readily available.   I did a search in central NY near Syracuse where I live and there were none available.

Had I broken down anywhere else, I would not have been able to get the exact car I wanted.  God.

I picked up the car later that day, drove back to my son’s place, had dinner and headed for home with my daughter as my copilot and to keep me awake.  It was about 8:30 pm with a 4.5 hour drive ahead.  We got about 2 hours down the road and the next unfortunate event occurred.  Two 4 point bucks stepped out into the road only 100 feet ahead.  I was in a 55mph zone so I wasn’t going very fast.  I was able to slow down enough to try to get by on the shoulder on the right but one of the bucks turned around and walked into the back of the car.

We pulled off at the next exit to assess the damage.  As hard as the thump was there had to be thousands of dollars of damage to this brand-new car with 300 miles on it.  Try as we might, we couldn’t see any damage! That was another silver lining.   I mean how do you have a deer hit that hard, a buck with horns and not even a scratch?  God.  My daughter eventually found a small dent near the bottom of the door by feel but you couldn’t see it.

The last silver lining was when I got back into work the next day.  I had feared over a $1,000 bill to repair the damage to my boss’s bumper.  It was only $650.  It could have been much worse.

I have often said that if you don’t believe in God, hang around with me for awhile and you will.  All of this could have been much worse and some of it even worked out for my benefit.

The bible says that rain falls on the just and the unjust.  That basically means that good and bad things happen to everyone.  Through all of this I have been reminded that God was there looking after me.  The dentist got me right in and took car of the gum infection.  I broke down at the perfect location to get the exact car I wanted.  We not only escaped injury but there was no visible damage to my car from the deer incident.  The repair bill to my boss’s car was much less than expected.

I will say that 2020 has been an adventure.  Hopefully I have had enough unfortunate events to last for a while, at least through 2021.  If not, God will be right there to look out for me.