Washed Out

The day began quietly. I slept in and spent most of the morning and early afternoon crocheting and watching That's Entertainment. It was cloudy and not really hot, but very, very humid. I figured if it rained, I would just break down and call for a ride.

By the time I was having leftover beef and potato stew and a zucchini-carrot muffin for lunch, the humidity had erupted into a full-fledged storm. There were cracks of thunder that could be heard on Mars, and the rain was coming down in torrents. I hadn't seen such a storm since that huge one we had last year that flooded the Acme's first few aisles. How bad was the rain? I got soaked just going the two minutes from my front door down to my landlady's porch to wait for Dad.

But Dad couldn't come. He called me and said he'd tried, but some of the roads were flooded and he couldn't get around. I would just have to be late. I called the Acme and told them what was going on, then spent the next 40 minutes or so trying to find out which roads were closed. I couldn't understand which ones Dad said on my cell phone. My cell phone turned out to be pretty useless for doing anything online, though. My cell phone is an older model; all I could look up were ring tones and wallpaper, neither of which would help me during a major thunderstorm.

It was quarter after 3 by the time I looked up and saw that the rain had slowed down quite a bit. I decided that Dad probably wouldn't be able to get through a flood and ended up walking. I found a plastic bag in the pocket of my raincoat and used it to carry my sneakers and socks to keep them dry. I walked to work barefoot, just in case I had to wade through flood waters. I didn't - the water at the river near the Oaklyn ramp was high, but not spilling over. I did get to splash in some puddles, though. The rain had slowed down so much that I was more wet from sweat than from the storm.

After I arrived, I put my shoes back on and went into work. As it turned out, they weren't in desperate need of me anyway. The woman I was originally supposed to relieve had called out. I was able to come in for the cashier going home at 4 o'clock. In fact, it got so dead later, I spent two hours later in the night doing returns.

Dad wasn't happy when I called him at 9:30. I called him while walking down Kendall and told him I wasn't sure when I would be coming home. He was on his way to bed. I assumed he'd send Jessa or Jodie, but he came. He said he'd been worried about me earlier. I hadn't realized he'd called me before I called him because I was online for so long. I'm just not used to people worrying about me. I'm not used to calling people to do anything for me, and it still makes me feel guilty.

First of all, I learned during my childhood that you do things yourself, because you can't always expect someone else to be around for you. It amazes me how many people around here - children and adults - just assume that someone else will do things for them and that their parents will always be near-by. We didn't have family near-by growing up in Cape May. The closest relatives were in Virginia and Northern New Jersey, and my parents weren't speaking to most of the rest anyway. We did things for some elderly neighbors, but people seldom did anything for us.

Second, I prefer to do things myself, my own way. I spent so much of my life with people sending me to this remedial class or that group, taking me away from "the norm" because they thought I couldn't handle it. I want to show everyone in the whole world that I can handle things just fine with no extra help and no need to take me away.