I hate baseball.

Dissolving a long term relationship and starting over in your mid-thirties does weird shit to your psyche.

Today's bus commute home mostly involved sitting still in a glinting vehicular sea of day-game Tigers traffic - the American pastime apparently being to drive exhausted office workers longing for the quiet of home to the brink of suicide  for the sake of something to do while they wait for traffic to move forward another half-inch. Staring absently out the window - an occupation in which I decidedly revel as part of my public transportation commuter lifestyle - I caught my reflection in the window of a neighboring SUV. The convex pane of glass, presumably just to be cruel, gave my mouth the appearance of jowls.

And I panicked. Yanking out my phone I stared at my mouth in the reflection and started poking at my face thinking,

Shit I need to stop frowning so much.

Oh my god I'm turning into Jon Voight.

The person who someday falls in love with me will never know me looking young. No one will get to love me while I'm still pretty. Shit shit shit.

About half a minute later I was kindly telling myself that millions of women look gorgeous into their 90s and I have many years before I turn into Jon Voight.

But still. I'm smiling a lot just to ease my face muscles, knowing full well it won't do a goddamn thing.

Incidence

Saturday night as I waited to pull out of the condo complex where my friends K. & E. live, a cop car drove past me.

Shit.

I contemplated returning to my parking spot and waiting awhile, but figured that would look even more suspicious, and in a sleepy affluent small town where not much happens the cop might wait for me, so I carefully turned left, watching my rear view mirror. The marked SUV spun a U-turn.

Shit shit shit.

When the lights flashed I was already pulling over. I gathered all the necessary documents, rolled down the window, and waited.

A surprisingly pleasant voice said, "Hey."

I craned my neck around and smiled at her and said "Hey..."

She didn't waste time on condescension. "Where's your headlight?"

With cops I don't normally cry or waffle or make excuses. "Gone."

She took my license, registration and proof of insurance. As she glanced them over, I offered, "It's an expensive repair, and I'm going to be replacing the car soon."

"Oh? How soon?"

"Like two weeks?"

She nodded. The scant midnight traffic pulling past stared, offense on their faces, looking to see what kind of monster gets pulled over in their town.

"Where are you heading?" she asked. I named the town. "You heading there for the night?"

"Oh yeah, yeah, I live there, I'm just here visiting friends."

"So the headlight is completely gone?" Her tone was matter of fact but still pleasant, with a thread of humor tucked away in the back like a hidden seam, which made it easier to answer frankly.

"Oh yeah, the whole assembly, just gone. It's like a $200 repair and since I'm getting a new car soon, I haven't replaced it."

"How's your driving record?"

In my nervousness I blanked on a humble way to say it. "Perfect."

She nodded again. "I'll be right back."

While I waited I laughed sourly to myself. The last time I visited K. & E. I thought my chances of getting pulled over were significantly higher here, where probably the only crime was kids TP-ing the occasional house on Halloween. I've driven past so many cops all over the county since the headlight assembly fell out (due to a really stupid careless maneuver on my part, no further comment) and none of them had ever even blinked. Oh well...bound to catch up with me sometime. Fucking money.

I heard her coming back.

"Here's your paperwork," she said. "I completely sympathize. Just be careful."

"Thank you so much," I said fervently.

It's been a rough few weeks, and as I drove carefully home over the dark highways that hold the far flung neighborhoods of Detroit together like webbing, my heart felt a little warmer. A little humankindness from an unexpected source.

Good people are everywhere.

Well, I'm back.