Loving-kindness

The bumper sticker had only one word on it: “Loving-kindness.”

And as soon as I read it, I suspected Someone was trying to mess with my mind, for I was in no mood for such a one word aphorism as “loving-kindness,” my patience having been tested by the distracted waitress who forgot to turn in half of my lunch order.

We were traveling back from a restful trip to South Carolina, and the more I drove, the more I traded my new relaxed attitude for my old familiar drivenness, determined to reach my destination by nightfall. And vacation traffic was slowing me down.

I was passing a plain, white, mid-size, economy car, when I saw the bumper sticker: “Loving-kindness.”

The driver, in the car alone, resembled Clarence, the lovable angel in the classic movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, only this man looked a bit older and more weathered than the softer Clarence.

Lori didn’t notice my agitation because she was sleeping, pleasantly unperturbed by the traffic in front of us, or the memory of the waitress behind us---who was at least partially to blame for my agitation, or so I reasoned.

Then I saw the bumper sticker again, maybe thirty or forty miles after the first sighting.

“Strange,” I mused, “how did Clarence II get in front of me?”

By then Lori had awakened. After a few minutes, or maybe seconds, of observing my driving, she advised, “Remember, the main thing is that we get there safe and sound.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” I grumbled.

About 30 minutes later it happened again; I passed Clarence II a third time.

“Am I in the Twilight Zone or what?” I said, pointing to the “Loving-kindness” bumper sticker on Clarence II’s plain, white, mid-sized, economy car, explaining how I had already passed him twice before.

“How does this guy keep getting in front of me?” I asked, momentarily taking both hands off the wheel to emphasize the gravity of my question.

I didn’t so much as crack a smile when Lori giggled.

Thirty minutes later we stopped for a quick break and a cup of coffee.

As the young employee, an older teen probably getting some summer work experience, handed me the change, Lori innocently asked her, “How much is your ‘senior coffee’?”

Then the fun began.

“Oops,” the novice worker replied, “I guess I overcharged you. I’ll get the manager to override the cash register.”

Before I could say, “No, no, don’t worry, we need to get back on the road,” the teen had turned the other way to get the manager.

The manager, looking to be all of 25 years old, openly expressed her frustration with the younger employee, even though Lori apologized for having asked the price of the coffee in the first place.  And the stubborn cash register wasn’t cooperating with the manager, either. All the while, Lori repeated how sorry she was, even as I was tapping my foot, arms folded across my chest, anxious for this little delay to be resolved.

Then the manager said something she shouldn’t have. Murmuring loud enough for me to hear, she complained, “It only amounts to 25 cents a cup.”

Suddenly all the irritating comments of employees I had encountered in my last few weeks of travel were localized in this one, fast food manger. I heard the words from the airline stewardess who bluntly told me, “You can’t keep your laptop there,” instead of a more professional, “Please put your laptop under your seat.” (“Who trains these people, anyway?” I whispered to Lori)

Then there was the stewardess who sounded like Ned in the First Reader as she stammered through the pre-flight passenger instructions, even forgetting our destination, “Louisville, KY.”(I turned to Lori: “If she can barely read and doesn’t know where we’re going, should we trust her to take care of us 30,000 feet in the air?”)

And another stewardess gave us the time from the wrong time zone once we had landed. (“They don’t know where we are or the time. Thank the Lord we made it.”)

And finally, there was the not so amusing waitress who chuckled about how she had forgotten to turn in my lunch order.

I aimed my salvo of vituperation in the direction of the fast food manager: “Excuse me?” I was preparing to ask, “Did you just say, ‘It only amounts to 25 cents a cup?’ So, if I were SHORT 25 cents for my coffee, would you tell me, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it, just get kinda close, that’ll be good enough?’”

I planned to clinch with an emphatic, “I don’t THINK so.”

Of course, I was going to threaten her by recording her name, which I would fire off in my blistering report to headquarters.

And then, I saw him, out of the corner of my eye.

Clarence II was standing right there, not 10 feet away from me, nonchalantly eating vanilla ice cream, oblivious to my presence.

“Okay, I really am in the Twilight Zone,” I thought.

Or something worse.

Or better.

Clarence’s bumper sticker, “Loving-kindness,” was blazoned before my eyes like a flashing neon sign.

Calmly turning back to the manager, I said, “We are so sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks for your help.”

And to the younger worker, “You’re fine; it happens to all of us.”

As for my speech, it had evaporated into the air before I uttered a word of it, absorbed by the bumper sticker, “Loving-kindness,”on the back of the plain, white, mid-sized, economy car.

Driven by Clarence II.

Whom I never saw again.