Sometimes certain factors will get tired of their randomness and formulate a plot against you. I know this because a number of them got together today and had some fun at my expense. Call it bad management on my part, call it just one of those things, but whatever you call it, I wasn’t impressed.
I first suspected something was up when I approached my motorbike after a day’s teaching and found my keys in the ignition. It was strange because I usually don’t do silly things like that. However, I guessed that I had been distracted somewhere between stopping the bike and taking the cover off my shoe. You know how it goes with habits, fine for most days when you follow the order and don’t need to think, but fatal for those days where something distracts you half-way. A student yelling at me through the window was the spanner in the highly tuned machinery of my mind, and thus I forgot to take my key out.
On further inspection, I realized that this had a number of consequences. First, I had left my lights on, which usually wouldn’t be a problem, except that the ignition was also on which meant my lights had been on all day. Maybe in a car this would be a big problem, but on a bike you can just flip down the kick start lever and be on your way. I did this and thought nothing of it. Nothing, that is until twenty minutes later when my bike started lurching. It was akin to the response a bike might give if it were, say, out of fuel. However my fuel light wasn’t lighting up, which it will usually do at least 20km before I run out. I don’t have a gauge, merely an orange light which changes to red when the situation grows more dire. It sat there, unlit, begging me to find another answer. It occurred to me then that there were two scenarios where one might see this light unlit. One was the scenario where one had fuel in the tank. The other would be the scenario where one didn’t have any fuel in the tank, but also no power to make such a light lit, as in a flat battery. As I eased my shuddering bike to the curb, I realized that I was probably case number two.
I thus embarked on a trip to the nearest petrol kiosk, Coke bottle in hand. On the way, I checked my wallet. That’s right, I had planned to visit an ATM in the morning but had run out of time. So now, I had to search for an ATM, then a petrol kiosk. I managed the two and made my way back to my bike. As I poured the liquid into the tank, I realized that in some ways we are at the mercy of the little things in life. We get distracted by all the big things, that the little things have room to run amok in their own little ways. I seem to remember a book which was popular a while back called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff or something like that. This is simply wrong. Sweat the little stuff, pay attention to it. We live and die in the details. Well maybe not die, but definitely endure long walks carrying bottles of yellow fluid. And after a long day with a hungry belly, this is almost the same.
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