The Theory of Relativity

I sat in the sterile waiting room, clutching an unopened issue of Popular Mechanics, dread seeping in from all sides. And when the technician approached with his obligatory dingy clipboard, I knew my worst fears had been realized.

"Your vehicle failed the smog," he said, dispassionate enough to border on indifference.

This had never actually happened to me, and I stared at him blankly for a minute, trying to process exactly what he might mean by that.

"What?"

He consulted his notes, which, it turned out, totaled all of four words.

"There is a leak at the top of the fuel tank. The vehicle failed the smog test. Get it repaired and we will re-test it."

With that, he tossed the clipboard, with a clang, onto a nearby desk and proceeded to the next vehicle, which would undoubtedly receive happier results. His colleague actually charged me $59.99 for the privilege of receiving this devastating news.

I didn't even drive this car; the fact that I was there at all was purely an act of charity (which would never be repeated). My husband drove this car, and he was still diligently nurturing his tendency to never maintain anything.

Still, the DMV registration was due, and I could not pay the bill without getting the vehicle smogged and receiving a favorable result.

Somehow, I paid the fee, grabbed the paperwork, and stumbled out of there. By evening, I'd searched the internet and found a mechanic who could look at the car the next day, which was Sunday.

Bright and early, I pulled up to the repair shop and met the mechanic, Javed. He was kind enough to hoist up the van and show me the crack in the fuel pump, a lone drizzle of fuel making its way languidly down and over the fuel tank.

Javed gave me a soulful look. "If someone had thrown a lit cigarette under this vehicle, it would have exploded."

I tried to calculate when I first started smelling gas around this vehicle. Ah yes, it was six months earlier. I chose not to divulge that.

At one point, I was obviously standing too close, and he actually swiped at the air to make me step back! I reared back, mortified.

He collected himself and told me that he needed three hours to perform the repairs, assuming it was only the fuel pump. I told him that I would walk up the street and find something to do and be back in three hours.

That was the firm plan on which we both agreed.

So off I went, into the unknown, since I had no idea what I would find to do as I walked up the street. Thankfully, the day was mild, not the 95 degrees that we'd had the day before. I trudged along for 15 minutes until I happened upon a large thrift store. I knew they carried an impressive number of books, so I headed in that direction to kill some time.

Half an hour later (damn!), I was paying for my books and a couple of summer tops. The lanky man who took my money greeted me exuberantly and let me know that "if I knew anyone who was over 50," they have Thrifty Fifty Tuesdays! I smiled weakly, particularly grateful for the small kindness.

Somehow, I wasted three hours doing almost nothing. I stopped at a fast-food restaurant for lunch, then found a shady spot to read a book. A woman sat near me, smoking one cigarette after another, as I tried not to openly gasp for air. Resigned, I finally went into a drug store and bought a handful of items.

Almost faint with boredom, I headed back to the repair shop at the designated time.

As I walked, my cell phone rang. It was Javed. He apologized profusely, but let me know that his assistant brought the wrong fuel pump (4 cylinder, not 6 cylinder!), and the right part would not arrive for another two hours. Could I come back in two and half hours?

I stopped and stared at my bag of books, tops, dog bones, deodorant, and hair color. Close to complete despair, I told him that I would take an Uber home and would wait for his call. He apologized again, reiterating that it was such an unfortunate mistake.

Yes, such an unfortunate mistake.

Under the awning of an orthodontist's office, I called an Uber and waited. After a few minutes, a woman pulled up in a white Dodge Dart and told me her name was Bonita. That was the right answer, so I settled myself in the passenger seat next to her.

She asked how my day was going, and I told her she would not believe what I had been through in the last two days.

As I found a spot for my bag of items, she told me that she knew exactly what I meant. She told me that the car she was currently driving was a rental, and the very first day she had it, a rock hit and cracked her windshield! I responded by making empathetic noises.

And she needed a rental because her only daughter and only grandchild had been in a serious car accident while using her car. The baby had inch-long lacerations all over her skull, and they didn't know what other internal damage had been done. The baby had already undergone cosmetic surgery, at 18 months old.

And they just learned that her daughter's husband was cheating on her with someone else, and that woman was now pregnant.

She went on to tell me that her father had recently undergone quadruple bypass heart surgery, but had not recovered well. Her elderly mother was close to collapse.

And Bonita's sister delivered her first baby at 40 years old, but the baby was four months premature, and only weighed a pound and a half at birth. That was four years ago. The child's overall health was poor, and she was having trouble walking.

I turned my head and stared at her, my jaw dropping slightly.

"How are you functioning?"

She shrugged. "It's not easy."

As she continued relating her litany of horrors, I thought about my failed smog test and my cracked fuel pump.

My failed smog test, and my cracked fuel pump.

When she dropped me off at home, I wished her well and said I hoped things would start looking up.

Bonita smiled. "They have to, right?"

"They have to," I agreed, and said good-bye.

When I picked up the car, it was ready and repaired. Javed, again, generously hoisted it up to show me the new fuel pump and the dry exterior of the fuel tank.

The next day, I took the vehicle to the same smog place, where the same man re-tested it and handed me the paperwork that said it had passed. I paid the DMV registration and dropped it in the mail.

But the whole time, I was thinking about Bonita, and her injured daughter and granddaughter, and her ill father and overwhelmed mother, and her sister with the premature and fragile child.

To say problems are relative is an understatement. Bad luck is relative. Our ability to cope is relative.

I parked the repaired and smogged vehicle at the curb and walked toward my front door. Something made me stop and look up at a sky so clear and bright that it made me squint.

The day before should have been a scorchingly hot day, but it had remained mild while I trudged around, wasting time.

I had been blessed with fair weather.

Clearly, I had been thoroughly blessed.