I was having one of those rare moments where you are in a generally good mood and things are going your way.

I got up out of my Lay-Z-Boy and made my way towards my desk. I picked up my keys and wallet and unplugged my laptop. I was going to head on over to my local writing group but stop first and get a hair cut on the way.

For some strange reason, I catch all green lights on my way to the Great Clips. This rarely if ever happens, or at least I seem to normally catch more than my fair share of reds. Now I know that logically you are supposed to get a red light about 75% of the time but with me, it’s closer to 90%. Maybe it’s just a personal bias or ignorance on my part for not noticing the greens I do get? Who really knows. What I do know is that my wife, back when we first started dating, made this observation all on her own without any prompting on my part. She also calls me a dork to my face and as we all know, wives are never wrong.

Anyway, I get into the lot and park my car. As I’m walking up I notice three other young men also heading towards the same establishment. As luck would have it, and with a little help of a quickened pace, I got there first. I got in and got a decent cut and was out in under 10 minutes. Score one for me I’m thinking.

Still in a perky mood, I make my way over towards the drugstore next door when two teenage boys adjust their stroll and start making their way towards me. I’m an adult male in my mid-forties and wasn’t fearing, at least by the way they looked, that they were about to do anything illegal.

The first teen calls out, “Excuse me…”

I adjust my course towards them, “Yeah?”

“Do you know where the party is?”

Like I said, I’m an adult in my mid-forties, I’m not the type of person who would know this kind of stuff. My first thoughts are that these kids are tweaking on something.

Then the same first teen reaches into the front pocket of his hoodie and starts to pull something out. My old arthritic panic-stricken heart starts to swell with fear. The inside of chest starts to rattle with fear as on the outside, I start to take a bit of a defensive dive out of the way.

The kid produces something small, too small for me to identify as it is half buried between his two hands, and says, “The party is right here!” He pulls some little string and a party popper explodes small bits of stringer paper skyward the whole distance of no more than eighteen inches.

The fear in me gets kicked aside by the old grumpy old man who was sitting much further back in my mind. I quip sarcastically, “Ha, not cool, you little twerps.”

I hear myself say these things as another part of mind yells out from still somewhere further back, who uses that kind of language?

The old man, still in the drivers seat, shouts back, “I do! And if you don’t like it you can get the hell out!”

The kids laugh to themselves as I put some much-needed distance between them and myself. I start to dig my keys out from my pocket and end up dropping them on the ground. More grumbling.

I get in my car and grumble that the steering wheel is too hot.

I pull my car up to the stop sign at the end of the parking lot and wait as an entire train length of traffic goes by on what normally sees a single horse and buggy an hour.

Finally pulling my car out and onto the main street I accelerate just as the light, which was glossy green, turns a dark shade of red. On top of that I manage to hit every red light possible on the way to my writing group.
Damn kids.