A Bout with Humility

Once again, I take up my pen, or maybe my keyboard, to divulge to you my humiliation. Just when I think I have everything pretty well under control, that my pride, my paranoia and my voluptuous ego are down to a manageable size, something happens that brings it down to an even more manageable size. It was an excursion to Bend that brought on my latest mishap, an innocent trip to Costco and Old Navy. Most people can go to and from Bend without a ridiculous mishap occurring. But no, not I. Mishap follows me wherever I happen to go. Tonight it came to me in the form of three guys, in a car. We were in a car as well, driving, as I have said before, to Bend on Highway 97, when my mom noticed a crazy black truck thingy in our rear view mirror. He was coming up fast and flashing his lights on and off at us. How irritating. My sisters' and my suggestion was to get up even with the next car in line and slow down so he couldn't get around us. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, my mom decided against this plan and got over instead, allowing him to quickly catch up to us, to our everlasting detriment. As they became even with us, I was immediately aware that the passenger was hanging out the window and looking and pointing at us. I snapped a command about not looking at them, keep your eyes straight ahead, at which point in time they started yelling something at us. By now, my mother and myself were growing truly worried. I snapped another comment about rolling her window up, which she did, and as they continued yelling, I again shouted not to look at them. I saw him make a shrugging gesture at the driver that said, "What the heck? They aren't listening." My fears were growing greater and greater that they were going to soon pull a gun out and open fire. But no. This was not their intention at all. It would have been far less uncomfortable if it had been. As they pulled further ahead of us, for the most part giving up, the passenger made a last ditch effort. I was aware of him pointing at the top of our car. It clicked. There was something wrong with the top of our car. As I told this to my mom, and told her to pull over, I heard our friends in the crazy black truck thingy's final words, "The top is open." And they zoomed away. I climbed out of the car on the side of the road, and sure enough, to my acute embarrassment, our car top carrier was flapping in the wind. What must they be thinking? Here we thought they were molesting, axe murderers, and they were just trying to get it through to us that our storage unit was ajar. I quickly snapped it shut, and returned to the car, exclaiming how embarrassed I was. My mom was bright red. We could really talk of nothing else all the way around Bend and then back home. Just when I think nothing can humiliate me, something like this happens.