Two Inconveniences

The nut and bolt that holds the handlebars on my Razor scooter secure to the rest of the frame has been missing since I found it near my neighbor's trashcan three months ago.

There is a very real possibility that the scooter was not trash in the first place, but belonged to a poor kid named Damion, who in my sick fantasy uses the scooter to explore the neighborhood and furthermore as an excuse to get out of his apartment when he could no longer stand to see his single mother physically abused by her boyfriend.

I prefer to believe the scooter was actually trash because it makes me feel less guilty about potentially stealing a poor, little kid's scooter, a scooter I barely use myself.

In fact, I am almost positive it was meant to be trash because it's a pain in the ass to ride a scooter with the handlebars not secured to the frame. Still it's tough to ignore the "Damion Cruz" Sharpied on to the bottom of the scooter.

Every weekend I scooter to the local mom-and-pop hardware store on the corner hoping to get the missing piece for my scooter. It's not so much a mom-and-pop store, but more a Italian-guy-with-a-neat-mustache store, and that fancily groomed Italian hates having his shop open.

Yesterday I rode there at 11 am, thinking that provided ample time for his spaghetti and wine hangover to have passed and for his shop to be open. It was closed, but the pet shop next door told me the friendly Italian would be in his store at 1:00. I returned at 1:30, but the shop was still closed. My Razor scooter would be incomplete for another week. I found this very inconvenient.

Then a few hours later while I was out with my friend my roommate called and told me the family room ceiling was pouring what appeared to be sewage water all over our family room. This was much more inconvenient especially since I had to deal with a gang of comically incompetent characters.

Our Hasidic Jewish manager and building owners celebrate every Jewish holiday, including some holidays that I am fairly certain they make up for their own convenience. After neither of them got back to me within the first three hours of my family room's flood I was worried I would not hear from them until Hannukah concluded.

Option B was our building's maintenance man, who is a decent handy man and a mediocre thief, as he stole my roommate's guitar the first time he worked on our house. He picked up the phone but said he was busy with his mariachi band until 1 am.

The building's super picked up the phone and told me in broken English that he was in Manhattan but two hours away from Brooklyn. This would make sense if it were 1882, but the advent of bridges and subways made his argument incomprehensible.

Eventually my building's owner got back to me. Instead of telling me how he'd resolve the situation he provided me with lectures on how accidents happen and humans are imperfect and how our ceiling raining shit was not his fault. After a lengthy discussion on when Shabbot officially ends, he told me he'd take care of everything, to which I understand to mean he'll take care of it within two weeks.

Damion Cruz's karma is a bitch.