Pandemic Rage: A Comedy

The Toyota dealer offered valet service for maintenance appointments. We took advantage of that because my husband is immunocompromised. The car was returned at the end of the day. The next day, we drove down to a nursery in the next county, where we were taking advantage of their curbside pick-up service. I wondered why my husband looked rather odd driving the car. His arms seemed more awkwardly stretched out than usual. After we got home, I was preparing to go to the library for curbside pick-up and found that my feet no longer reached the pedals. The car mechanics had done what they always did, moved the seat way back and neglected to return it to how they’d found it. This time, we couldn’t move the seat forward. I became incensed. All the frustrations of this new, restrictive way of life came to a head in that moment. Paul, who is much slower to get angry than I am, said he’d try again to move the seat. He worked on it for a while, and proclaimed it fixed. The culprit, apparently, had been a squished foil-wrapped chocolate lodged under the seat’s sliding mechanism. It had probably been under the seat for years, before moving into this mischievous position. I pictured the scene if the mechanics had been summoned to ‘fix the seat.’ Now, I was grateful, instead of furious. I laugh whenever I remember my absolute fury, whose ultimate cause was a piece of candy.

4 thoughts on “Pandemic Rage: A Comedy

  1. I love this, I can picture you and Paul so easy in this, and the driveway and the car. I remember in 2020 before much was known about how the virus was transferred, someone broke into our car, and so we spent a very long time “DE-contaminizing it”

    I love how the end transforms the poem in a way.

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