Godsmacked and Shamwowed

I have this complicated relationship with fate. Probably just the Catholic upbringing, but when things are going well, I tend to become highly suspicious, and things have been going eerily well for me here in the Pacific Northwest.

Not perfect. My basement apartment is sort of weirdly freezing all the time, regardless of the temperature outside, and I’m working stupid-long hours, but we found an amazing home that’s pretty close to work, the schools are really good, and I’m enjoying the hell out of all the different work I’m doing.

And then my wife flies into town and everything I’ve loved about Portland she completely gets, grinning like I haven’t seen her grin in years as we’re walking from the loan officer’s place to dinner downtown. She loves this city. She loves the house in Washington that’s only fifteen minutes from downtown Portland. It’s great here.

To my mind, of course, this is the last nail in the happiness coffin. Things are officially going smashingly, and something’s got to give.

Turns out, it was the Subaru.

The poor, long-suffering Outback–already sporting a dry erase board in place of the rear passenger-side window from the Jones bike that crashed through it at the start of my drive across the country–ended up getting stomped by a van as we left the city.

Statistically, the odds of being attacked by an indy band with Radiohead influences while driving in Portland are like 1 in 3, and I’ve since found out that the incredibly nice young gentleman driving the van is one third of a band called Rags and Ribbons. The guy on keys was also in the van, was also an incredibly nice guy, and nobody was hurt all around, which is the best part. This particular band seems like pretty talented guys and create an interesting sound for a trio with no bass player. Plus, and they have a video where a kid runs through the woods in his pajamas.

Really the most fantastic part, considering I’d been sort of expecting the worst, is that we weren’t killed right then and there. This realization, that the godsmack had occurred and we’d survived, made me weirdly happy as I exchanged insurance information. I’m sure it wasn’t lost on the band, who watched me giddily tearing the ground effects off my car so that I could drive it from the scene, and probably wondered if everyone from Pennsylvania was like that.

Maybe I’ll be struck by lightning tomorrow, but for now, I feel like I’ve passed some sort of pop quiz Portland decided to throw at me. It could have been really bad–a much heavier band in a much larger van–but it wasn’t.

Further proof that my ch’i was in need of realignment before I could start my new life as a lumberjack? Today I walked out to my car, armed with the same excellent black duct tape that was used to install the makeshift dry erase window, and prepared to tape my side mirror back into something like its original location.

Being Portland, it had rained most of the day, but unlike Portland, this had been a hard rain, the kind that soaks your shoulders and thighs when you ride your bike in it, even through jackets and rain pants. The poor Subaru was saturated–far from an ideal moment to apply tape.

“What I need,” I heard myself think, “is a kind of rag or something.”

And then there it was.

For some reason, when I sold my business and packed up a bunch of stuff to move to Chicago (similar to the Portland move only eternally sad and fruitless), I came across a genuine Shamwow. I don’t know where it came from, but it went with me to Chicago, and then home again, and somehow it was on the trip to Portland.

Given that my window had been busted out, I’d removed everything–I mean everything–from my car in case of break in, but standing there in the rain holding my mangled and dangling mirror in one hand and tape in the other and thinking, “I need a rag,” I noticed it there on the floor of the car. The Shamwow. Say what you will about Vince, the embattled Shamwow spokesman, but there is no better product for cleaning the surface of a snapped off mirror before attempting to reattach it with tape than a well-traveled Shamwow.

Not only did my tape manage to reattach the mirror–handy, because I have to be at a house inspection and then back at work as fast as possible tomorrow–but the mirror even adjusts position electronically again. None of this would have been possible without the Shamwow, which I think will become some form of pop art in my new home or go with me everywhere from now on. I’ve never been out for big wins and world domination so much as just surviving and focusing on what really matters. Ribbons are swell, but rags are really useful. And Shamwows are just plain magical.