a funny thing happened on the way

if you call locking my keys in my car "funny."

last saturday night I was on my way to a surprise party - one that I helped to plan and was supposed to help set up - and stopped to get some gas. for whatever reason, I took my keys out of the ignition, threw them on the front seat, took my phone and debit card out of the car with me, and shut the door. I realized moments later that I'd locked myself out. I can, at this point, only say that I was glad that I'd taken my spare out of my WFM apron pocket (as the apron was in the backseat of my car at that time) and left it where nick could find it.

there is a certain amount of emotion that goes into a personally disruptive event such as this one: anger, fear, disappointment, resignation. I've locked my keys in my car a few other times, and this was the first time that I felt the latter two more than the former.

for example, as a junior in college, I locked my keys in my car on a snowy, cold day. on that day I was impatient and angry: my car was running, I was on my way to class, and my mom couldn't get there fast enough with the single spare key. this was the case in the handful of other incidents involving my person and a missing set of keys: there was a certain amount of woe and whining, of acting like a giant baby and apologizing sheepishly later.

in the forty minutes it took nick to venture to our apartment and then meet me at the gas station, I seemed to handle myself quite differently than before. sure, there was the intial sigh and depressive self-blame ("oh, I'm such a fucking idiot...! who does that?"), then the resignation ("nick's my only hope. I'm going to be late, but that's how it has to be."), and then... like no other time before... there was the positivity! the "well, it's fucking hot and sticky outside, so I might as well go into the convenience store and see if the attendant's at least nice enough to let me hang out for a while." and that's just what I did.

it turns out that the attendant was nice enough. I explained my predicament immediately and nervously, but berlin, the tall, lanky, cornrowed, pretty-eyed young man behind the counter, was friendly and nonchalant about the whole thing. for most of the time that I was there, I was the only other person in the tiny store, and pretty soon I found myself in random, but not shallow, conversation with the most genuine person I'd met in months. the regulars who came into the store liked and trusted him, and I could see why: he gave everyone who came in an equal chance. he would talk to those who needed to talk, laugh with those who needed a laugh, hurry for those in a hurry. but he remained smiling, seeming to enjoy all of it.

in a time when I'd feared that my efforts of last fall - my self-imposed campaign of allowing others to show me how amazing they were, no matter what the circumstance - had failed, or at least somehow stalled, I saw that another person out there was also entirely open to this kind of thinking. he was simply naturally happy to be treating others as he wanted to be treated, with interest, affability, and respect. and he sloughed off people on whom this equal chance was seemingly lost, not rudely but in the kind of softly resigned way that shows disappointment in the present and hope for the future.

the rest of my night was entirely better for this encounter. rather than noticing how long I waited at the gas station, I was instead ridiculously happy and grateful to see nick. and in an exceptional interpersonally challenging moment, I was more comfortable than I usually am in entering a social situation without a buffer and fostering a few new friendships while there. okay, okay... the substances consumed at the birthday party helped in that, too, but the point is that I think I regained my enthusiasm for letting amazing things happen to me in a few moments when I could have pity-partied my way through the rest of the evening. and I can't think of a better way to spend a saturday night.