Sometimes You Just Don't Know

I love a good story.  My husband has been known to regale me with a good one here and there.  Well, more than here and there.  He’s always got a good one stashed away, to whip out at the ready - bless his big-hearted, story-tellin’ soul.

Before we started dating each other, waaaay back in the day when we wuz a coupla  rambunctious, flirty band-mates, we were on our way home from our very first gig together.   

Chris had just joined the band, and my car was on the fritz, (and also he was really cute)  so I hitched a ride with him.  It was just us two,  toolin’ along in an old Chrysler New Yorker that he borrowed from his folks.   We were feeling really good, had just played a great show at a club called Nightingale’s on 2^nd Avenue in the East Village and we were just buzzing and on top of the world.

I remember looking at his profile as he drove, his easy smile and his thick black eyebrows.  And then for some reason, he just started telling me a story.

Chris use to work for Greenpeace.  Part of his job entailed driving a Greenpeace van.  Sometimes at the end of a working day, he’d “borrow” one of the cars or vans for the evening, drive it around  wherever, then eventually take it home to Queens and then bring it back to work in the city the next day.  Nobody was ever the wiser…

Chris:  “But one morning, coming back in to work, as I was driving it started overheating.  It lost power going up over the bridge – it was all uphill, so….I was on the B.Q.E. Overpass – the highest part just before the Kosciusko.  Way up in the air over factories and graveyards and maybe even some kind of canal…the Gowanus?   Whatever the fuck.  Whatever is under there is not good.  Not wholesome.  And then my car just stops dead.

“So I was sitting in the driver’s seat – kept trying to start the car back up.  When along comes this guy, just walking along on this narrow, 3-foot shoulder of sorta-walkway.  He comes walking up and stops at my car window.  He goes: “Hey, what happened to you?”

Now, keep in mind that no person should be walking along there on this suicide-walk where 18-wheelers are roaring by.  But then again, he was not your average Joe.  He was obviously mentally disabled.  But he wasn't afraid.  He was doing his thing, man.

SO anyhow, yeah - he goes: “Hey. what happened to you?”

And I say: “I don’t know.  What happened to YOU?”

And he thinks for like a second, and then he looks at me and goes: “I don’t know.”

And then he just starts walking again, truckin’ on down.  I sit there in my dead car, and I watch him walk away.”

* * * * * *

It may have been at that moment that I knew I’d spend the rest of my life with Chris, I don’t know.  But I knew I could definitely love anyone who would decide it was a good idea to tell me a story like that one.