In medias res

I had a very much un-look-forwarded-to dinner with A tonight. I haven’t seen her for a few weeks due to being lucky being busy, and was almost getting used to not having a super needy, demanding friend asking me for constant favors. “Please do my taxes.” “Please drive (way over) to my place this weekend and move the trash cans inside, since I’ll be out of town.” “I am so mad at X, and want to get together so I can tell you about it.”

Fortunately, these days, I can respond, “Um, not driving? My foot it be broken?” But I couldn’t say no any longer, so I agreed to a happy hour. I suggested one place, and she was “sick of it,” so she suggested another place, a restaurant that might as well be a Catholic grotto and object of pilgrimage, given its perch on a hillside and uncountable number of stairs leading to the front door. Feeling terse, I responded “Too many stairs. Let’s go to McCormick”s.”

So, I went there. And the fucking old people had all of the handicapped spaces, as I actually suspected on the way. So, I went somewhere else. Unfortunately, by that time my foot was so tired that I was considering running into people in front of me to avoid needing to put in the clutch.

It’s still on the tip of my tongue to tell the next old person I see, “You may be fucking old, but I’m fucking broken, so get out of my parking space!”