This will surely be TMI for you, but yesterday I had a very bad day.
I won’t bore you with the details of which, since we have never met, and if we had, I would even less want to bore you, as then we might be acquaintances, with the airy possibility of perhaps one day becoming friends, and I have noticed that friends are often bored by the specific details of someone’s, anyone else’s very bad day.
I mention my bad day only for the purpose of creating a sense of contrast between the ongoing misery of yesterday which was like a bus that’s lost its brakes and keeps plowing forward, hurtling towards its own imminent destruction; the kind of day it was, until I walked with my criminally pooping dog Bonenasher, past the pristine white, blue-doored, beautifully maintained, well-mown lawn and shipshape appearance of your quiet unassuming abode. Which I find perennially soothing and mysterious as I have never seen a person or pet enter or exit your buttoned-up, voluminous, enigmatic dwelling.
If you were inside, peering through your window, behind the filmy white curtains, you may have observed my surprise and delight as I knelt down to examine the completely new, unopened box of LED light bulbs, with the note scrawled on top in black magic marker: Free LED lights, please take them!
I need you to know, how immediately your generous offering changed my attitude, how I smiled in the knowledge which had escaped me for too much of yesterday, until I found the little box sitting unspoiled, daintily pristine on your stone wall; that most people are essentially good.
Despite the fact I gave the box to someone who loves LED lights and I do not, I want you to know, what you probably already knew; that you are a force for good in this world which has made an impression on me, a person who daily imagines setting the houses of several of her neighbors on fire.
Not you, of course, I’m not trying to scare you. Also, thank you for the lovely, tiny, sweet, blue blinking clock.
Whoever you are; I appreciate your kindness, taste, inherent mystery, and generosity. The neighborhood has been kept safe by you once again for yet another day…
Your Friendly Potential Arsonist
P.S. Have a great day!
