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What Living in the Hills Will Do to You

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I hate to sound like Rosanne Rosanna-Dana or even Gilda Radner. But you know, it’s always something.

Can we kvetch? Kvetch (ka-’vech) : verb intransitive. I kvetch; you kvetch; he, she and it just take it.

My car broke down yesterday while I was rushing out to do a few errands. I was also suffering from a cold or Shapiro’s syndrome or whatever it is that’s going around. I had with me in the car a copy of a bad novel I started to write in 1979 and six specimen bottles.

My doctor wanted me to get tested to see if I had picked up an intestinal parasite like giardia when I went to Mexico last spring. But I suppose there was a bright side to getting stuck out in the world with a lousy novel and six specimen bottles: The bottles were empty.

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I had been kind of depressed for a week. It was partly due to Shapiro’s syndrome, the disease that causes columnists to run off at the nose instead of the mouth. And it was partly due to my own version of SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder. I had been reading about SAD and how some people were able to cure their depression and carbohydrate cravings with stronger light bulbs. I tried it, but what happened was that I ate a loaf of bread while I was under the sun lamp.

Maybe what was really getting me down was staying indoors and not exercising. All that coughing and sneezing from my Shapiro’s, you know. Did I tell you it was my own fault that I got sick?

Yes, on Saturday night I bragged that I hadn’t had a cold all year. Even though I knocked wood as I said it--solid oak--the Evil Eye still got me. Within an hour of committing hubris, my throat tightened up, my sinuses started aching and I got that hideous itching down in my ears in the place where Q-tips go to die.

On the fritz myself, I stumbled into my gourmet car repair shop, where you get a free cappuccino along with an oil change and lube. The garage is pretty far from my home now that I live in the hills. In fact, the mechanic pointed out that my new home was the reason my brakes had ground to a halt. “That’s what you get for living in the hills,” he said.

Maybe that was my problem. When you move from the flatlands to the hills, everyone likes to blame all your troubles on where you live. Your car breaks down. That’s what you get for living in the hills. You get a cold because the Evil Eye sees you brag that you haven’t had a cold. That’s what you get for living in the hills. You pick up a little giardia in Mexico. That’s what you get for living in the hills.

A nice woman from the garage gave me a lift part of the way home. We got to talk about her giardia and her adventures in specimen collection. She dropped me off before we could discuss her unpublished novel.

Now my problem was I had to walk. This led me to cross a street I normally would be driving by. I said “Hi” to a strange woman who was crossing in the opposite direction. I’m still enough of a hippie that I say “Hi” to strangers (although around 1980 I dropped the “Have a nice day”).

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The woman suddenly realized I was her former high school teacher and began praising me profusely, saying what a difference I had made in her life. “I want you to know I’ve never forgotten you.”

I mumbled a few polite words and then started walking the remaining two miles uphill.

Now I really had a problem. Someone had actually said the words I’ve always wanted to hear. I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life. You have no idea how difficult this is.

I tell you, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.

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