CONVERGENCE

RIGHT PLACE-RIGHT TIME/WRONG TIME-WRONG PLACE

Most people live the bulk of their lives in neutral with the major highs and lows, the forwards and the reverses only showing up as a few blips on the cardiogram of their lives. Being at the right place at the right time or being at the wrong place at the wrong time are the points on one's cardiogram of life that show up infrequently if at all. The most rare of these spikes is when one person's right time right place collides with another person's wrong time wrong place and their intersecting collision cancels each other out. These points of intersection shouldn't be confused with luck. It's not when someone wins the lottery that's just being at the right place at the right time. It's not about losing your life savings at the blackjack table. That's just your bad luck.
With the Coronavirus halting all life as we've known it, the wisest amongst us have told us we're all to shelter in place. Staying home helps all of us in protecting ourselves and each other. Other than emergencies or essential shopping for food or medications we should all be isolating, keeping out of the Coronavirus' way.

Being stuck in the middle of a remodeling project and needing a mat knife to trim down a rug pad, I'll admit, is not something I can really twist into classifying as an emergency unless you consider that rug pad issue affects the rug that then affects moving the furniture back in, that then means our daughter can't move back into her room, that means we're stuck with listening to a continuous looping laugh track of The Office playing from the guest bedroom adjacent to our bedroom. If I stretch the definition of essential shopping I may be able to squeeze in a mat knife purchase as fundamentally necessary in allowing me to cope with my OCD fear of losing control over the completion of our reno project. Mental health is my only justification but I do this with a tremendously large scoop of guilt. Further rationalization allowed me to give myself permission to leave the house when I saw the government classifying hardware stores as essential services. I figured if I made a handkerchief and hair-tie mask, wore gloves and carried my homemade hand sanitizer I would be protecting myself and more importantly protecting others. Home Depot was my goal. In and out in as short a period of time as I could manage. When lives are at stake going out to purchase a mat knife might sound like a reckless, selfish thing to do. I knew that but here's where the definitions of right and wrong begin to blur.

Even before I had the car out of the driveway I began shaking my head in shame and regret. I began telling myself that this non-essential trip was not right. Even my mask seemed to be trying to tell me this wasn't worth it. The small hairbands began to pull at the backs of my ears, pinching them and making them burn. The four miles from our house to the closest Home Depot was going to take less than ten minutes. Add to that thirty minutes in Home Depot and I'd be back home in less than an hour.
A Home Depot in Madison at this point in the Coronavirus ring of immediate danger was not yet reaching its apex although lines for service or checking out were marked in six-foot increments. I got my knife without touching anything with my hands and I used the provided sanitary wipes to sterilize the keypad at self-checkout.
I was back in the car and halfway home when my moment of intersection happened.

This only happened to me one time before back at our weekend home in the Upper Catskills. Early on a Saturday evening in summer I was driving the country roads of Delaware County on my way to the weekly McIntosh auction in an old creamery in Bovina. The light was still golden. I was pushing the speed limit hoping to get to the auction a little early so I could get a good seat. There's not a lot of traffic in Delaware County on an early Saturday evening. I hadn't encountered a single car coming in the opposite direction.  About twenty minutes into the drive I started to close in on a pickup truck on the road ahead of me. The roads in Delaware County are never straight but bend and weave their way through the Catskill Mountains and valleys. I saw the pickup as a distant speck and then lose sight as it bent around a mountain curve. When the pickup came into view again I could see what appeared to be flames shooting out from underneath the pickup's back bed. The only thing I could think of was I needed to get the driver to pull over and get out of the truck before the whole thing caught fire. If I wasn't speeding before I now moved with the intensity of an Indy 500 driver to get as close as I could to the rear of his truck. I couldn't pass him on these curving roads so I began honking and flashing my lights. The driver's first reaction was to speed up but I kept on his tail honking and flashing my lights as the flames seemed be broadening. All I could think of now was to begin violently waving my hand to see if that would get him to pull over. Finally he seemed to get the message and he pulled over.  I followed him onto the shoulder yelling "Get out, GET OUT!" as the flames were still shooting out of the back of his truck. He looked completely confused until he saw the flames. I told him to get but leapt back toward the cab.  He wasn't listening, He managed to grab a clipboard before the back of the truck blew up. He was safe, unharmed but stunned, too stunned to ask "Where did you come from" or to say, "Thank you". I drove off to the nearest house I could find. I asked them to call the state police or whoever might be able to help. I drove on to the auction. Everything was back to normal

The road back home from Home Depot wasn't rural or particularly curvy but it was wide enough to have a median dividing the two directions of traffic. At a certain point the road passed through a low-income housing area. There were ten to twelve units in each two ot three story building. There were over two dozen buildings spread out at random angles on both sides of the street with a small park and open green spaces linking them into one complex. The complex tried its best to seem serene. Dusk was just beginning to set in with the sun starting its golden decent. There's a right angle turn in the road that wraps around the end of the complex. Even though there are several outdoor parking areas slapped up against some of the buildings several cars were still parked along the road. Two cars were left parked right at the bend in the road. When I began maneuvering the curve is when I saw them. The oldest, a boy, was no more than two, his sister not much more than one waddling with the first steps of a toddler. They were still on the grass but heading toward the street at a point where they would be hidden by the parked cars from a driver coming from the opposite direction. It was my time to decide if this was going to be right time/right place or something very, very different. There was no time to think. Instinct was all I had to go on. I hit the breaks and then the flasher button leaving the car in the middle of the street with the door flung open. I hid my fear behind a mask of stern calm. I held out my hand and used the command I use on our dogs "Stay". The little girl seemed to stop but the boy smiled as if he recognized me and then started to enter the street in front of the parked car. I bolted not looking in either direction sweeping him up and back to the grassy edge between the street and the sidewalk. Neither child cried. They only looked at me with the blank stare of childhood trying to figure out if they should be scared of the situation or the stranger. I couldn't get out any words we just stayed there, me on my knees, three humans frozen in space wondering what to do next. Then I saw a man coming across the open space neither running nor appearing gripped in fear. I couldn't tell if he was relieved or angry. I didn't know if I should yell at him for not keeping a watchful eye over his kids or smile at lives being allowed to continue. Instead he nodded; no words were spoken by either of us. He walked off with the two children. He didn't take their hands. He didn't hit or scold them while within my eyesight. I got back into my car. Life returned to neutral.