Not today, Satan

You’ve heard of Cassandra, right? No, not the girl around the corner who works at the clinic down the street. Ancient Greece – Cassandra – Cursed by the gods that her premonitions will always come true, but no one will believe her. That Cassandra. I’m like her, except I have no idea who I pissed off for this kind of curse. My therapist thinks I should stop calling it a curse and just accept that sometimes, shit happens. Except, every time I try to mind my own damn business, shit happens.

So, I’m just… I’m me. I have a therapist and a psychiatrist or a psychologist or whatever the hell they call the one that gives you the happy pills. Yeah, I have one of those. And they both keep telling me there’s no such thing as curses. And if there were curses, it would end badly, but it always ends well, great even, so it can’t be a curse. They keep telling me I should call it a blessing instead. Fine, whatever, but when you just want to mind your business and the universe keeps putting you in situations you don’t wanna be in… Wouldn’t you call that a curse?

It’s been about six days since the last time I had to dodge everybody’s cameras ‘cause, yeah, everybody wants to talk to you when you did some shit that will make them go viral, but when you’re just trying to make it day to day…

Anyway, it’s been six days since the last time I became an accidental hero. I wish there was a method or plan to all of this. If I know something will happen every other Tuesday at 2pm, I can plan to stay at home and be out of other people’s business. But no, I still have a life, and no one will let me curl up in a corner of my apartment every day, so I have to go out and hope this isn’t the day that the curse hits me again.

I tried leaning into it, thinking that I might as well just go with it and see how that works for me. Turns out, it works in reverse. When I’m waiting for it, nothing fucking happens! So, I either spend all my time on edge, waiting for someone to need me, or I ignore the whole thing and get stuck with surprises all the time. And yeah, if the surprise is money or food, I love surprises. But these? Can’t stand them.

“I would have expected him to have caught on by now.”

“Really? You expect intelligent thought from humans?”

“Weren’t they supposedly intelligently designed?”

“The entire universe claims intelligent design; it doesn’t make it true.”

“But…”

“You’re expecting intelligence and critical thinking from the dumbest species in all the corners of the universe.”

“I know, but…”

“But nothing. Give him his gift and let us be on with our business.”

It used to happen a lot in coffee shops. Something about hot liquid, underpaid employees, and undercaffeinated customers just begs for disaster. I couldn’t go inside any of them without saving someone from a boiling pot of water splashing into their face. There was the one lady who spilled her own drink, slipped in it while blaming someone else for making her spill the drink, then tried to call me a creep for catching her before her neck hit the sharp edge of a glass table. You’re welcome, ma’am. Glad I could help you avoid paralysis today, you evil old—

You get the point.

Bless the drive-thru only joints that pop up everywhere. I feel safer in the confines of my car, focused on the road and not the people in it. And really, don’t I save a life every time I hit the break instead of plowing through that intersection? And some days, let me tell ya, I really wanna go through that intersection.

“Hey! You got a phone number with us?”

Ah, the joys of being a teenager. Your money is yours to play with and you don’t have to pay bills. Responsibilities are far off into the future. I rattle off my phone number then order my usual. “Whatever I had yesterday,” I tell her. “But large instead of medium.”

We finish the formalities of checking out and I’m directed to move forward. The line is long this morning. Is it usually this bad? I try not to venture out in the daytime. Too many people who don’t have the good sense God gave a goat. But sometimes, you can’t help it. Man, I miss pre-COVID when you could go to the grocery store at 3am and beat the rush.

So slow, so slow, why is this line not moving? An angry uncaffeinated person in front of me is mad their coffee wasn’t made right or something. Yelling – that girl is barely 16, if you don’t stop… I hate people. I toss my head out the window and yell, “Give her a break! You’re holding up the line!”

Somehow I think I caused this one. Dipshit in front of me gets out of the car but forgets to put on the break. The car rolls forward. We’re on flat ground so there’s no slope to make it pick up speed. There are no cars coming, though, and I swear, it’s moving so slow he can just get back in it before it gets too far.

Not today, Satan! Keep your curse to yourself!

Except bro going after his car and the employees scrambling (and taking videos) means that no one was in the little shelter up ahead when a gust of wind blew something big and sharp into it, where it would have hit the employee, had she been in there.

Damn it. I did it again.