When I am working at home I have decided that during my lunch break, I am going to go to the dump and go through the gradual process of unloading all the shit from the outhouse that came either from my old house, or has been ripped out of the new one.

I kicked off this new regime today by getting rid of a few boxes of unwanted stuff and some lighting from the “Elvis Pike Classic Collection” that the previous owners had put up, presumably to give the place the look and feel of a red neck saloon bar.

A Ceiling Light

As I was unloading all the stuff, the exotic wooden fan light that had graced our living room, stubbornly got jammed in my boot as if it was stoutly refusing to be consigned to an ungraceful death in an electrical skip.

It wasn’t long before a fight broke out and instead of trying to calm the situation by trying to work out how I got it in the boot in the first place, I began yanking and kicking out at it amongst a tirade of foul language and unnecessary aggression.

As the fellow tippers watched on in bemusement, I gave it one last “Get out you fucker” through gritted teeth and gave it a two handed yank with all the energy I could muster.

Suddenly, it came out like a rabbit from a trap and flew past my head, giving me a deserved clip on the ear as it did so. As it descended to the floor, everything went into to slow motion but instinct told me not to catch it as it had glass and sharp wood all over the shop.

CRASH!!!

With epic comic timing, the glass shattered on the ground just as a middle aged lady was reversing behind me, apparently giving her the impression that she had smacked into my car.

She leapt out of her vehicle with her hands half raised as if I was going to shoot her and frantically began her embarrassed apology.

“It’s okay, it’s okay” I said “It was me… I just dropped the light, don’t worry you didn’t hit anything.”

She looked down at the shattered light as it drew its last breath, then looked at me as she calculated what the Hell had just happened.

“OH FOR GOODNESS SAKE…. I THOUGHT I HAD HIT YOUR CAR!!!”

With that angry statement still ringing in my ears, she got back in her car, slammed the door and accelerated away in what seemed to be an irrational fit of temper.

What on earth was that all about?

Please correct me here if I am misunderstanding the situation, but it appeared to me that this woman was angry that she HADN’T hit my car?

Now, if the boot was on the other foot and that was me, I am convinced that I would have jumped out to apologise, then when I realised what had actually happened, I would have put a hand on my chest, breathed a deep sigh of relief and said; “Oh thank God for that, I thought I had hit your car.”

I would have the got back in my car and spent the rest of my journey celebrating the fact that I didn’t have to explain away yet another calamity to my beleaguered fiancée.

Maybe when you are like me and you are used to disasters then you avoid one, it is instinctive to celebrate accordingly, but if you are not used to them and you think you have had one, it is in your nature to throw a pathetic hissy fit anyway?

If that’s the case, I will just stay clumsy; it’s more fun, plus that way I can save my anger for stubborn fan lights.