Insidious Adaptation

One surprisingly-sunny, late-winter day, as my daughter was figuring out her footing on the edge of a sidewalk, down hill, my apprehensions laid in my will aiding her to stay upright. As she continued to place one awkward foot in front of the other, something shiny caught my eye. I looked past her as she stepped down to safety and made my approach, as though it was placed right here, for me. "Hey, what's this?" A rhetorical question, for as I made my approach and the dim silver shimmer informed me that is in fact currency, a significant currently at that. The mind's ability to determine things quickly, on display here as I discounted the possibility of a penny or nickel, even a quarter was too small, maybe a fifty-cent piece? No, not that either, for it was a little smaller than that. "Ah, it's a silver dollar!" I exclaim to my careless daughter and a wife who was too far ahead to take note of what she might have assumed another piece of garbage I...

“Damnit!” This as my U-Haul truck crunches into the front cover of the turn signal on the industrial work van.  “Go figure.” I say to myself, working on my cussing.  Panic now starts to wash over me, as this once arrogant handing of a 25 foot U-Haul is sandwiched between two work vans, one of which has been damaged. As I continue to pull forward, I look in the oversized, and rusty-rimmed side mirror to see, in fact, that the U-Haul is going to continue to scrape where the light protector used to be no matter which direction I go.  Old physics lessons play in my head, trajectory and all that, stuff I can only recall learning about while playing pool, more than any class. OK, if I turn the wheel this way, I can alter the trajectory of the back end, CRUUNCH, OK, that actually did the opposite. Now I will turn the other way.  SCCCRAAAPPPE. Ah, now I am into a tree on the other side of the bottleneck to the cul- de- sack. OK, OK, now if I drive a little...