The Skin of My Teeth

Five speeding tickets in one week.  Okay – gotta slow down.  Cruise control only.  It’s weeks later.  K and I are  just coming out of Payson… dark beautiful night.  The moon rising over mysterious Ponderosa Pines on the mogollon ridge.  Damn!  Distracting… K talking.  My brain tracking parallels’ – the ways that I can relate to her experience of meeting a man in Senegal… barely speaking the same language… he French… little English… she English… no French.  He tiny, compact, wiry.  She large, adventurous, curious.  She went for the energetic of it… the rightness of it… the hugeness of it.  they marry.  Move to Canada.  He’s muslim… she comes from a huge family of Mormon’s… okay… pay attention… We’re coming up to Star Valley now… that’s where I got photographed speeding last time… it was in rain… they change the speed so abrubtly at the bottom of a hill!  Damn!  Shouldn’t have  paid it!  photo wasn’t clear.  I could’ve denied it I found out $265 dollars and 3 points later.  I told myself it was good to pay it to not be at the effect of others.  To not hurry.  My pace. My way.

K carrying on… stories… real… live… not coming from my CD…we make it through the town of Star Valley.  It’s dark and beautiful again… we’re getting closer to our destination…. About to take the turn off… I know it’s coming up soon.

What are those pretty blue and red lights… oh No!  A cop car.  I pull over right away.  Damn!  No way to get out of this one.  To not pay the lousy picture.  I’m done for… I could lose more points or even my license.  Stay calm.  Stay calm.

Did you know you where going 65 in a 45?

How to answer that?  Well, no, I lamely reply.  The dark is all around us.  Night full and crisp.

He asks to see registration, driver’s license and insurance.  K digs in the glove box and I’m praying they are there and up to date.  Ah yes, relief… we find them.  I am so grateful for the part of me that pays the bills and files things in their place.

He takes the papers and walks away.  Dread.  Silence.

I lament to K how I really can’t afford a ticket in any way shape or form.

Miraculously, the nice, kind, polite man says “I’m just going to give you a warning”.  He shatters my image of cops making their quotas.  My image of the country cop catching the city slicker.  “out here we go 45 he says”,,, “you need to slow down:”.

I am stunned.  A warning!  It’s at least 3 points!

I smile, thank him, and my silent hybrid creeps forward into the night.

So You Want to Know about the Time I Got By By the Skin of My Teeth

(Listen to an audio version)

As if it’s the only time.  Right.  Well, it was – the time I’m going to tell you about was, that is – back quite some long time ago, when I was still wearing those big black boots.  You probly don’t remember when they was in style, as you is still rather young.  But they was quite high, above the knees, and all leather, so they were.  Quite very sexy, especially when worn as they often were without nothing else.  Not that I’m saying as I ever did that myself.  Nor that I’m saying as I didn’t.  I’m just not saying either way, and you can just think what you will, as you will anyhow, being a young person and rather headstrong. 

So, as I was saying.  It was rather some long time ago, and I had this idea – notwit’standing that it was not such a good idea, as I can see now – that it would be rather funny to steal a police officer’s hat.  I had the very officer in mind, too, and I don’t mind saying that I had my reasons for it.  Oh, yes, indeed, I had my reasons for it.  A very fine officer, too, what was often on duty near where I was living at the time.  I used to keep an eye on that officer from my bedroom window many days, and especially when I was getting on those boots what I mentioned earlier.

Yes, well.

So one day, or one evening, as it was, I had this idea, and I had a goodly laugh thinking about it and I therefore made up my mind to do it.  I dressed myself up all in black, including those black boots what I told you of, and I went out onto the very darkening street to see where I could find this officer.  As it happened, she was just patrolling the next block so I found her quite easy.  The tricky thing was sneaking up on her without her noticing, as stealing the hat would be very much the easier if she wasn’t keeping that eye on me already, if you know how I mean.  So I observed that she was moving in a casual sort of way down the block southerly, not so very fast, but steady, good and steady; and I decided that I would just hide myself behind the big black street bin that stood between Oldham’s and Rootersham’s, and pop out behind her when she went past.  It seemed a good plan.  How was I to know?

I easily gained my position, by moving briskly roundabout the house of Rootersham and through the garden patch, carefully avoiding the puddles and piles of animal deposits, on account of the boots, which I did not want to stink.  And I hid myself behind the big black bin, crouching down, waiting, waiting.

I heard her footsteps approaching, the tapping and clapping of her own boots on the pavement; and I admit I was very looking forward to doing the deed.  I poised myself at the corner of the big black bin, and I breathed in little gasps with the very pleasure of the thing.  Soon enough, though, soon enough the steps came round the corner, and I, all poised, all ready, leapt out and dashed toward the figure coming around the corner, with the desired pointy hat now clearly in view.  I thought how well it would look with the black boots. 

And then boom!  Bang!  Blam!  I found myself sprawled on top of some goodness-awful bloke in denim, of all things, squirming and grunting.  I punched the measly fellow in disgust.  And then I felt a hand on the back of my collar, pulling me up quite very easy.

“Thanks, chum.”  She had her very large, blue-barrelled firearm drawn and pointed, two hands and all, very so at the bloke, eyeing him right powerfully.  “Been trying to catch this one for some time.  Often making problems, around the turn of the night, as it is even now.”

I looked longingly at the hat – so close, but now clearly vastly untouchable.  “It was quite nothing,” I said.  “Then, can I have your hat?”

You’re right – I didn’t really truly ask that question.

The Skin of Your Teeth

What if your entire life is one occasion after another of getting by by the skin of your teeth?  It may sound exciting, but it’s really not.  Maybe, instead of adventure, it’s really just a lack of ambition, a lack of trying, of not meeting your potential.  You think you’d be relieved, but instead you’re disappointed, disillusioned.

Instead of getting away with something, you’ve just barely succeeded, just barely achieved mediocrity, just flown under the radar enough to be mostly invisible.

Once you’ve learned the art of just getting by, it becomes harder to soar past your goals, to astonish yourself.  You become a finely tuned machine, responding only to the stimulus of a deadline or a concrete expectation, able to easily reach that goal, but only just in time, just barely grabbing it with your fingertips as the buzzer sounds, just sliding by on the skin of your teeth, and never knowing what lies just on the other side of that narrow finish line.