I’m not the guy carrying the bumper…

Last week, I was sitting on my deck smoking when one of my neighbors stumbled into the parking lot carrying his car bumper. He had no car, just the bumper. This seemed odd (ok, well more entertaining than odd, don’t judge) so I lit up another cigarette and watched him, in his drunken swagger as he went from garage door to garage door, trying to figure out which one was his. Finally, he hit the jackpot. He went inside, shut the door and I didn’t see him again, until this morning. I had just come back from the first walk I’ve taken without pain since sustaining an overuse injury (if tomorrow's the same, I get to start running again Monday-yea me!)and had spent last night with friends having the time of my life so I was in a pretty FANTASTIC mood. Meditating on how nice it was that I had a great time last night and didn’t have to worry about what I had said or done, or that there would be photographic evidence of some epicly regretful decision, I was again sitting on my deck smoking (yeah, yeah, I know, running and smoking don’t mix, cut me some slack, if I give up all my vices at once I’m pretty sure my head will explode) when Mr Bumper drove up in a car that was, surprise-surprise, missing a bumper, had the left rear corner panel smashed in, and had been marked for the impound lot. He had less trouble this morning finding his garage, opened it, put the bumper in the back seat and drove away.

When I moved out last winter, I’d never lived alone so the idea scared the shit out of me. I only looked at one apartment before I signed a lease. My strategy was simple, move into the same apartment complex my parents had lived in briefly in the 90’s when they were between the home they had just sold and the new home they were building. I knew the complex, it was familiar and that was comforting as I stepped out onto this new ledge. I had actually slept on my parents loveseat in that apartment for a about two weeks because I’d been tossed out on my ass on Thanksgiving and had nowhere else to go (again, another story for another time, and that one’s a doozy so don’t miss it). Everything seemed normal here for the first couple of months but then the snow thawed, peopled opened their windows and sliding glass doors and I realized that I had actually moved into what I can only describe as one of Dante’s seven circles of Hell (and yes, like with gregarious, I’m hoping this is the first reference to Dante you’ve read in a blog). You see, Mr Bumper isn’t an anomaly here. Two flights down, I have neighbors that apparently smoke dope for a living so at least once a week I wake up in the middle of the night with the munchies, have no idea why, and my apartment smells like cannabis central (sidebar, spellcheck will automatically add to n’s to cannabis if you only spell it with one…feel free to use that piece of trivia in the future if you’d like, I’m a giver), I’ve had to close my windows and turn on the air conditioning on a couple of occasions to block out the sound of drunks puking in the dumpster outside so my 11-year-old doesn’t have to hear that fantastic sound, and don’t even get me started on the toothless guy at the pool that thought “hey sweet thing, where you live at” was a good opening line.

Anyway, I’ve been feeling increasingly frustrated with the neighborhood lately until I saw Mr Bumper this morning and a light bulb came on for me. I’m getting the rare opportunity to see what an alternative existence would be like for me if I continued to drink, kind of like my own It’s a Wonderful Life, only without the gym floor that opens up into a pool and the snow. As long as I stay sober, I don’t have to be the guy carrying the bumper. No matter what challenges I face right now as I figure out this whole creating-a-single-life deal, I can rest in the knowledge that I know what I did last night, I can be there for friends (another sidebar, as I’m writing this, I just got off the phone with a friend whose daughter had some tough questions for him about his ex and her new “friend” so I told him the bumper story and hopefully it gave him a moment of levity in an otherwise difficult situation), and I can look in the mirror each day and at the very least say “I’m not the guy carrying the bumper.”