Day 7 – I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden (or the mystery of the missing suit pants)

"(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden"

(as played on the radio on my way back (2^nd time) from the tailor)

I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden,
Along with the sunshine, there's gotta be a little rain sometime . . . .

. . . . So smile for a while and let's be jolly, love shouldn't be so melancholy
Come along and share the good times while we can . . .

-Joe South/Lynn Anderson

“Everything turns out all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end.”  From the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Unfortunately today’s post is about Freak out number 2 – yes the Larry –Curly-Mo machine in high gear. The mysteriously disappearing item this time was my suit pants. I took three suits to the tailor to get taken in (the 10 k from last year), but when I was getting ready to leave, there was somehow only 2 ½ suits. The pants that belonged to one of the suits was mysteriously gone. The very chatty discussion with the shop ladies suddenly went momentarily quiet. Where the f*** are my pants! What the f**ck did you do with them! That’s not what I actually said. And I hope that that’s not what they thought I was thinking. But it might’ve been. And the look on my face probably gave me away slightly. But, but, but . . . they were right here . . . wha, wha, where’d they go!?! Their expressions, at this point, were slightly defensive. Look. See? They’re not there . . .  Yea I know that, so where did you put them! Again, from my perspective, the thought was just more brainstorming ideas in my head, than actual directives, even in the telepathic sense. I am not sure it was perceived that way, however.

Now, I didn’t have a freak out right away. I called my wife to see if they were at home (I knew they wouldn’t be). I also walked along the sidewalks to see if I dropped them (that’s everybody’s conclusion, by the way. “Well maybe the pants slipped off the hanger? No, they didn’t fuckin' slip off the fucking hangar! Yes I know they are slippery, that's why I carefully hold and watch them when I walk the five fucking steps to the shop and I would fuck-ing notice if they fell because they would hit my leg, and I’d feel it, and besides they're fat man's pants so they’d be easy to see. Well it’s possible, right? Well, technically yes. But look, that couldn’t happen, because someone else would see them and tell me. Oh you really think so? What about some homeless man? Now I’m freaking because I don’t have the patience to logically debate the fact that I’m surrounded by nice friendly shoppers. The honest kind. Like the cab drivers who return suitcases of 100 dollars left behind by drug dealers. These are Slovaks, they’re niiiccce people. Even the hhhoomelessssss. (Especially the homeless).

Well, this goes on for several hours. I tear apart the house. I walk around every sidewalk I possibly could have traversed in my walkabout to get to the tailor (we’re talkin' about 47 meters of combined sidewalk – 7 at my place, and 40-ish at the tailor. I even harangued the poor parking lot attendant. At last I was relegated to drawing flow charts and probability trees in my mind. The flow chart I’m thinking about was pretty funny or cool when someone posted it on face book a few months ago, but now it’s really pissing me off. You’ve probably seen it. It goes like this: Do you have a problem? Arrow. (yes /no diamond). More arrows. Can you do something about it (yes/no)? finally all arrows leading to Don’t worry. (insert Bobby McFerrin link).  OK. This does NOT work. I try probability trees. Level 1: Probability the pants are in this world - 100%. Level 2: Probability they’re in Slovakia - 100%. Level 3: they are in my house - 0.00001%, in the car - 0%, in the street with a homeless man - Not buying it. Probability they are in the shop? 8^th grade statistics and logic clearly  suggests - 99.9999%.

All this logic has me really fired up and I'm doing the Larry Mo and Curly moves where they slap their faces, wag their tongues and make unusual, loud, and high pitched noises. As always happens in these situations my wife things I’m blaming her. Why would I do that? Just because she doesn’t believe me that the lady in the shop took it? I calm down enough to ask her to call the ladies and explain the complex message in her native tongue to the native shop keepers that, hey, maybe they mixed my pants in with some other cloths? Maybe they were holding them for a minute and put them down when they went back for a cigarette break, etc. I mean the whole place is full of cloths, how hard could it be to get them mixed up? Will you just look for them good damn it?!? I came back a minute later to get an update, and she had already made the call, so clearly it was too short of a call to really get the message properly communicated. Well? So, are they looking for it? They say it’s not there. But did they actually look?! I don’t know, I can’t really ask them to look, you know. if it’s there they’ll find them . . . Oh. Yeah. Like the IPod that was in the lunch box hidden from the kids and we didn’t find it for 6months?! Or the new phone we got R for x-mas that was in the cosmetic bag and we couldn’t find it for a week?! A brand new phone for euro 160 for an 11-year-old! Or the camera which was left in the picnic basket for a month and you called me hysterical for constantly asking you where it was??? Or the time it was in your “other” purse and you couldn’t find in time for the x-mas party?!? Another fuse blows. Again I am being asked why I am blaming her. I am not blaming her and I am not mad at her! I am just plain mad!! To prove this I go around and tell every one of the plants, one-by-one to fuck-off. This kind of works. So I do it again. I feel even better. Then it dawns on me what the Austrian hypnotist really means about how, when I lose my keys, I feel unacceptable. That is CORRECT. This situation is unacceptable! NOT ME. I AM PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE. It’s the situation that’s unacceptable! Now the plants, being the good listeners that they are, happily get a bonus lecture on what it means to be unacceptable.

I calm down enough to explain the logic of my freak outs (which are the bane of our marriage) to my wife. Honey. I know that this is bad behavior, but the situation is unexplainable, and that is unacceptable, and that makes me mad. And then I feel like freaking out, and then I get more nervous. And when I TRY TO CALM DOWN I realize I am ruining my day and that gets me even madder. And then I try to look at the big picture and say, so what, it’s a new suit, 500 bucks for a new suit, it’s a rounding error on my monthly pay check. I just gave a homeless man 500 Euro! FuuuCkkkk! Then I can’t handle myself and I’m about to blow. Self loathing is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Arrgghhhh! The full evolution and gestation cycle of a freak out laid out in slightly jittery fashion. This somewhat calmer explanation is practically enough so that now, she really can see the true nature of my helplessness. She is momentarily sympathetic. Can I make you lunch? Are you kidding! How I can think about food at a time like this! At this point we agree in a fairly calm manner that yes, it is sensible, given that probability tree  that I’ve drawn up in my mind, that I should go down town, one more time, and no I shouldn’t worry that the shopper keepers will turn me in for being a stalker, and no my wife doesn’t need to call beforehand to explain all this to them. Off I go. Don’t think about the pants or you might have an accident (my wife). I try to not let this one set me off again and say OK and quickly leave.

Well, no dice on that one. And I do think they actually were concerned I was a stalker, stalking there second hand Italian clothing (I kept looking on all the racks to see if someone put them there by mistake, you know like the ladies who push the carts with the returned library books). It got a little awkward. (In my most sheepish voice) is there any chance it could be on that shelf? (the one behind the register). (Shopkeeper, without turning around) one hundred percent  it is not on that shelf. At this point I was wise enough to hold back my telepathic rhetorical question. Oh really? And how many times did you check? Because that’s exactly what my wife said until I made her check the picnic basket for the third time and ya know what? On the third time she checked, 100 percent it was freakin there! Yea, so I turned tail, went home and repeated the plant lecture series.

Later, while going for a run, I started to get that feeling, the one Hollywood actors call cathartic. In Hollywood I think feeling cathartic is how when actors and actresses make an inspiring film about someone else's life story, it makes them feel better after having an adulterous affair with their co-star on their previous film. For me it’s more like, So what, I got problems like everyone else. What? Did I think I was special? Deal with it, dude. Then I started to wonder whether I was supposed to get some sort of meaning out of this. What was the lesson? Was this a teachable moment? Maybe I should learn from this and thank some higher force for guiding me through life. Then all the gurus I’ve ever read about started flashing through my head. Do I really believe all that stuff? I started to get nervous, a little confused, and almost angry again, so I just ran harder.