thematically fickle

The four of us stood in the street looking down at the shattered glass, the many pieces glimmering with the headlights of each passing car. We’d just come from a restaurant in North Park where we’d stuffed our bellies with rich Italian food and red wine and sated our appetite for lengthy bouts of laughter shared between close friends. It had been a fun and well-deserved night out sans children.

As we approached the car, our friend Joe pulled a folded piece of paper from the windshield. Finding scribbled missives stuck beneath the wiper of Sam’s 1972 Mini Cooper is not an uncommon thing; car fanatics can’t help but leave notes of excited approval, often littered with exclamation points. I mean, let’s face it: The newer, larger, BMW-made version doesn’t begin to deserve such excessive punctuation because, frankly, it doesn’t roll with even half the cool the original does, and the secret admirers know this.

Unfortunately, the wrinkled note that Joe read aloud while squinting beneath a street lamp was not exactly the kind you want to find on your windshield, especially when you’re a classic-car fiend who geeks out by rubbing and polishing and polishing and rubbing. Especially when you’re the kind of guy who’s turned defensive parking into an art.

This was the kind of note that stopped time, along with the flow of happy conversation. Joe began to read with curious anticipation in his voice but our smiles drooped as we quickly realized this was no pat-on-the-back type of message.

“Sorry about your headlight.
My bad parking job.
Call me.
David Feldman
555-555-5555”

Gah! If I’d been wearing my trusty mood ring, it would have instantly turned a smoldering and claustrophobic shade of gray. But I don’t wear it much because it leaves a mossy band of green on my finger. Anyway, the collective change in tone was palpable as the four of us moved into position to assess the damage. It wasn’t a headlight that was blown out. It was two fog lights and a smooshed-in grill that were the evening’s buzz kill. It was, indeed, a bad parking job by David Feldman.

Sam was tight-lipped and game-faced as he pulled the larger pieces of glass from the grill, which might just as well have been his heart for the way he went about it. He checked to make sure there was no internal damage, letting slip a few sighs. I think I actually picked at some of the smaller shards on the ground as if doing so would somehow rewind the scene or reverse the damage. Things were said by all of us to ease the tension, things like “Well, that sucks” and “How shitty.” Someone then said, “At least the guy left a note?”

I’m pretty sure this glimpse of the bright side originate with me, given my proclivity to always see the glass as half-empty. Nevertheless, I clung to this nugget of positivity from the moment it was uttered and for days and days later, desperate to believe that Feldman—as I came to refer to him—was a man of his childlike, chicken-scratched word. He’d said to call him, so call him we did. That very night, immediately after Joe and his wife exited the injured clown car and disappeared into their home.

Feldman said he felt terrible. He said he wanted “to put this all behind us.” He told Sam to send him an e-mail with the total for damages. He said that he’d pay for them, and I wanted to believe that he would.

More than wanting to believe it, I needed to believe it. I needed to know that there was some decency left in the world, and that our planet isn’t occupied only by people who open their car doors wide and—oops!—leave anonymous dents in vehicles owned by other people, as has happened to two friends of mine in recent weeks.

I needed to know that there are still a few people on Earth who take responsibility for their behavior, unlike the college students renting homes in my community, transient residents who feel no compulsion toward thought-stopping before calling me a bitch when I ask them politely to please not leave their garbage cans on the sidewalk.

What I needed—what I need—is some reassurance that the world isn’t hogged-tied by the liars and the I-didn’t-do-iters and the It’s-not-my-faulters, who have taken center stage in the contemporary American drama. I need to know that the Go-fuck-yourselfers—who occupy too many prominent positions, whose behavior is glorified and exploited by our media, and then idolized (deified?) and emulated by the everyday-man and -woman who raise up spoiled, lazy, entitled children to do the same—haven’t cornered the market on how to treat their fellow humans.

But enough about my needs.
This is about Feldman.

The act of leaving the note of admission was by itself, almost enough to convince me that we’re not yet living Beyond Thunderdome. But I hardly dared to hope for more than this teaser, this decoy.

In subsequent days, there were subsequent phone calls and subsequent e-mails. There were a few mis-communications and awkward conversations as messages were left and returned. Schedules were compared and found to be incompatible for a meeting. So Feldman did what most people would do. He promised to put a check in the mail. Right-o. I knew—we knew—it was over.

Then, two days later, the check arrived. And—and!—get this: The sucker cleared! I could have wept at the modern-day miracle were it not for the fact that, well, I don’t believe in miracles. It’s safe to say, however, that I would have been less shocked had the Virgin Mary herself appeared in the hard-boiled egg of my Cobb salad that same afternoon.

To me, Feldman is something of a hero for doing nothing more than what was right. This is terribly depressing, in a way, since heroism shouldn’t be about doing what you’re supposed to do. Hero might be the wrong word; perhaps “role model” would be a more fitting description. It’s his acceptance of responsibility and ultimate follow-through—rare traits in our times—that restore my waning belief that not all people are as hopelessly broken as the fog lights on the Mini.

To all the David Feldmans of the world: Rock on.
Oh, and be careful driving. Please.

(As published today in San Diego CityBeat.)