Dude, is this your car?

I'm gonna be real here. This morning, I was not at my "serving-est". (And yes, it's my blog so I get to make up words.)

The doorbell rang while I was half-dressed. I went down to answer it. A construction worker was standing there. He wanted to know if the car parked across the street was mine as they were getting ready to work on the the road in front of my house. I told him it wasn't, and I was sorry but I didn't know whose it was. He apologized for bothering me. I told him it was no trouble at all. He left. I was very calm about the whole thing and nice. God may have been proud. (I don't want to presume to say that He was. ;) )

10 minutes later, the doorbell rings again followed by some loud pounding. I am in the middle of getting ready for work. I try to fight it, but I'm pretty sure I look and sound mildly annoyed. He proceeds to ask me about the car across the street. I proceed to tell him it's not mine and suggest they try the street they had blocked off the night before since those people were pretty much forced to park on my street. I didn't say a word about his having rung the bell for the second time (which was God in action, let me tell ya). But I guess I didn't do a good enough job controlling the annoyance. Because he suddenly said, "Oh, I'm sorry, have we already been here?"

I told him that they had, but it was ok. At this point I was really going to have to rush to get to work on time. I had already discovered that I was out of deodorant. Not a good item to be missing on a hot day when one is spending it at a park outside.

I scurried around, and managed to be in my car with plenty of time to make it to a store to get the deodorant and some desperately needed coffee.

I started to back down the driveway. A truck pulled up directly behind me. It moved, and I started to back out again. But an old lady walked up directly behind my car. She just stood there for a while, then bent over to touch the concrete and brush her face with whatever she found (I don't know either). Eventually, she realized that I wanted to back out of the driveway and moved. Then she stared at me with a "roll down your window" face. So I did. And.........

She asked me if the car across the street was mine. Even followed it up with an, "Are you sure it doesn't belong to anyone in that house?"

I think I served God right about then by being extremely patient and polite as I explained that it wasn't my car and I was sure it didn't belong to anyone in my house. About this time, I spotted the construction workers at the end of the street staring at me pointedly as they waited for me to get out of the street.

I managed to get the items I needed at the store and book it to work.

I have since decided that the next time something like this comes up I'm going to try chanting, "Love is patient, love is kind," in my head. Hopefully I'll remember that when the time comes.