Sometimes You're the Windshield
Sometimes You're the Bug
The British band, Dire Straits, had a song called "The Bug" in which the lyrics "Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug" appeared. The song talked about the ups and downs of the human experience and this saying was so descriptive that it soon caught on and became an everyday metaphor.
Yesterday I truly felt like the bug! We woke in the morning to prep for the market to find our son sleeping in the living room and not his bedroom. He explained that he couldn't sleep in there because it was wet. "Wet? What do you mean?" I asked. He said his ceiling was leaking. I went to get a bucket to catch the drip which I thought must have been from a shingle lost in the storm last night. But when I opened the door, nothing could describe the look on my face or how I felt at that moment. THE CEILING WAS RAINING!!!! It was as if the ceiling had turned into a cloud and there was no way we could have had enough buckets.
We went outside to check the roof thinking a tree must have fallen in the night. But no! The roof didn't even have a leaf lying upon its shingled surface. I climbed the pull down attic steps and crawled into what passed for an attic in our house. I checked the inside of the roof and it was dry. I then made my way to the HVAC system which took up a good portion of the space. Shining the light from my phone's flashlight I saw that the floor underneath was soaking.
We called the emergency number for our repairman. Long story short - The HVAC line had backed up and the rain would continue for a few more days. He had fixed it and would return on Monday or Tuesday to make sure his repair had worked. However, we were now left with the daunting task of filing an insurance claim. Yep I was really feeling like the bug! Carpeting, Ceiling, insulation, growing mold!!!!
At the market we just were not our usual happy selves and of course that was reflected in our sales of the day. It was as if we brought the ceiling cloud with us. However we attempted to be merry and carry on conversations. And then a couple stopped by and we starting talking. He was a truck driver and enjoyed making stained glass windows. We talked and talked. His wife chimed in and told us that she was a crossing guard and that she just loved the time she spent talking to the children as they crossed the street under her watchful eye so she knew just how much we loved our social time at the market. We continued to talk and discovered that this lovely soul had stage 4 cancer.
"Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug!" "Our bug was not her bug!" It was time to change our perspective. We can in time mend and repair the damage done to the room. Things can be replaced, but people can't! I am always amazed at the wisdom I gain from the encounters at the market.
