Kudzu Queen

By Tamara Ducote

My friend Patty started showing up at recovery fellowship meetings looking unusually exhilarated. She carried a fresh bloom in her cheeks, and her eyes sparkled.

“What’s your secret?” I asked.

“Bicycling,” Patty replied. “It’s wonderful. It’s tiring, but so much fun. It feels like flying.”

I was converted. Bicycling sounded like a relatively easy way to obtain a state of exhilaration. Plus, unlike other means by which I’ve tried to attain nirvana, bicycling is entirely legal. I decided to begin immediately. Which means that I dug my old bike out of the junk room, threw it in the back of the blazer, and drove around with it for two weeks. I patiently waited for bolts of sheer happiness to strike me.

“You have to actually RIDE the bike,” Patty explained, when I was complaining that the bicycling program hadn’t worked for me.

“Oh, I can’t do that,” I said. “The rear tire is flat. I guess I have to get a new bike, huh?”

Yes, I really am that stupid about mechanical stuff.

A male fellowship member tried to explain the process by which my lame, useless bike could be made whole and functional again. The first step involved me buying something called an inner tube. The dude wrote down some mysterious numbers on a piece of paper, and sent me off to Wal-Mart. The numbers were obviously some kind of code. I never did figure out what 26×1.95 meant, because one of the small tragedies of my life is that there is never a Navajo Codetalker around when I need one.

The way I generally get things done is to procrastinate until I am so disgusted with myself that I will move heaven and earth to get the job done RIGHT THIS DAMN MINUTE. So it was with the inner tube project. I vowed I would not do another thing – neither eat, nor smoke, nor sit down, nor even pee – until I had completed my mission. It was with no little sense of urgency that I hurried to the bicycle department at Wal-Mart, since I was already hungry and had spent all morning drinking coffee.

The array of inner tubes bewildered me. I had been expecting this. I immediately sought out some blue-vested help.

“I need a tube that is 26×1.95,” I explained to a blue-vested soul named Dave. “The closest ya’ll have is 26×3/8. Can you help me find the right tube?”

The tube array baffled Dave, too, so he went off in search of backup. Moments later, Dave reappeared with Bert and Bryan in tow.

Bert dismissed my concern about the discrepancies between the secret codes.

“It’s the same thing,” he said. Bryan nodded, in corroboration of Bert’s assessment, and added, “Same thing. Exactly.”

“Then why doesn’t it SAY the same thing?” I asked, reasonably. “Look, ya’ll, 3/8 does not convert to .95. I’ll prove it.”

I had decided that Dave was the most easily bullied of the blue vest crew, so I ordered him to go fetch us a pencil and paper. When he returned, beaming, I patted him on the head and set to proving my mathematical theorem to Bert and Bryan. The process soon broke down, as my math skills are on a par with my mechanical skills.

“Never mind the pencil and paper,” I said, tossing them aside. “For serious, scientific proof, we need a calculator. Go, Dave.”

I guess Dave had finally had enough, because this time, he never came back. Evidently, Dave does have some sense. My remaining blue-vested conscripts and I agreed to disagree about the secret code numbers. Our next hurdle was the tiny print on the inner tube box.

“Why does it say ‘For 3-speeds only’?” I asked. “My bike is a 10-speed. What am I supposed to do with the seven leftover speeds?”

“Don’t worry about what the box says,” Bert said. “That doesn’t matter at all.” Bryan nodded solemnly in agreement, and murmured, “Doesn’t matter.”

“If it doesn’t matter,” I persisted, “Why does it SAY that? Why did the company go to the trouble of putting those words there, if it doesn’t matter? I’ve never harmed that company. They have no reason to put words on their boxes just to mess with me.”

Bert held his head in his hands, then began stealthily easing backwards, towards the end of the aisle. I knew if I let him get away, I’d never see him again.

“I’m telling you people, I NEED HELP! I have NO idea what I’m doing! HELP ME, DAMMIT!”

“OK, OK,” said Bert, soothingly, as he unclenched my fingers from his lapels. “We’re going to see you through this, OK? It’s going to be all right.”

“Gonna be just fine,” murmured Bryan.

Despite my misgivings, I allowed myself to be shepherded through the checkout line and solicitously escorted to the parking lot. Well, I thought, at least I’ve got the inner tube, now. That’s progress. And it only took myself and three other people.

Driving home, I wondered how many folks it would take to help me actually put the tube ON the bike, and inflate it. These were wearisome thoughts, indeed. When I got home, I tossed the new inner tube in the back of the blazer, on top of the bike, where it remains to this day. Then I took a long nap.

“How are you liking bicycling?” Patty asked brightly, next time I saw her.

“You were right about one thing,” I said. “It IS tiring.”

Contact Tamara Ducote at TDDucote6@aol.com.

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