Getting to Good Bye
Friday, September 28th, 2007“What do you mean it isn’t working?” I found myself asking a CTA bus driver earlier this week as I tried to use the Chicago Card Plus I’ve relied on for two years. “It’s just temperamental. See? If I just wave it back and forth….and sorta bend the edges here….or maybe just sneak up on it and lunge forward……”
I don’t give up easily on things I believe in, place my hopes in, invest in. Someone recently pointed this out to me. Despite their comments to the contrary, I’ve tended to see this as a good trait about myself, especially since I’ve never shied away from dropping things that are going nowhere. Things- like me and math…or tennis for example- not people.
The last few days, however, I’ve been kicking the remnants of our discussion around in my mind and have, at varying times, oscillated between acquiescing that I must be quite a delusional person indeed (!) and accepting that I could actually be an optimist in sarcastic trappings (shhhh…don’t tell anyone).
So as the disgruntled bus driver informed me that I must, as he said, surrender my card, report it defective, and request a new one; I pleaded (not so much with him as with myself), “I’m not ready to give up on it just yet! After all, it has stopped working like this before.”
While he let me pass with a stern warning, there would be no human intervention to collude with me as I attempted to board the el home last night. There was no mistaking it. The time had come to admit defeat and pony up for a new card.
In the end, I had to begrudgingly say good bye, tossing it away to join its friends on the Island of Misfit CTA Cards. But that is all that I will be parting ways with at the moment. I’m standing my ground and won’t give up on believing in people- namely, my boyfriend and our misfit relationship that could.
You didn’t think this was all just about some silly card now…did you?
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