The Line Between Heaven & Hell

Wednesday morning, I was running late. It was for a good reason, of course - as a perennially tardy person, I never run out of good reasons.

But having to buy my U2 concert tickets before my carpool run was a better reason than most.

So I left the house at 6:49. Doober's bus leaves the school parking lot at Pumpkin's school at 7:10, and if we are late, I get to drive him to school too. Her school is 11 miles away; his is probably an additional 15 miles or so. So I try to avoid being late.

But for U2? I will make exceptions.

I will also speed, drive through orange lights (you know... the ones that are almost-but-not-quite red), etc. And fate was on my side, for a while at least. I hit EVERY light green. Well... or yellow. Or almost orange.

And I made it to the next town in near-record time. I was happily tooling down second street, thinking we might actually catch the bus, when reality struck.

Road closed. Sawhorses were blocking the entire road one block before where I normally turn, so I had to jog to another street a block early, wait for a red light, and then wait for oncoming traffic to clear so I could make a left turn. I was a bit confused, because the road was not under construction, and there was no sign of anything happening there. I couldn't see why they'd just close a 2-block section of a main street through town.

I should have known...

Turns out that the police found a meth lab in an apartment building the night before, evacuated the residents and closed the street. And I should have known because this same thing happened last fall too.

Except that time the lab exploded first and sent the lab owners to a hospital burn unit. Which we all pay for, through taxes, since you know these people don't have insurance to cover when they blow themselves up. And this is clearly a pet peeve of mine. I think if you blow yourself up doing illegal stuff like cooking meth, the rest of the population should NOT have to fund your medical expenses. Cooking meth in your apartment, or even smarter, the ever-popular front-seat-of-your-vehicle-as-you-drive, should be the equivalent of signing a release of liability waiver, allowing them to just let you be as they find you.

There, I feel better now. So anyway...

I watched the school bus pull away from about 2 blocks down the street, dropped off Pumpkin at her school, and happily drove on with Doober, still basking in the afterglow of my U2 tickets. It was as if I had died and gone to heaven, but still had to drive the angel-children to angel-school.

And considering where my tickets are, that may be an appropriate comparison, because while I am in heaven at the thought of GOING to this concert, I will also be sitting way up high, about as close to the angels as you could be.

Which brings me back to the aforementioned meth lab.

Because the best part of the story is that the lab technicians who ran this lab were very careful. They didn't just risk going by memory when cooking their meth; they wrote down their recipe.

In their Bible. On the final page of the book of Revelation. But I guess, if you're going to use your Bible in that way, it is probably the most appropriate place.