things brake

Murphy’s Law says that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

Things that brake:
Bicycles
Cell phones
Hearts

My bike, my cell phone, and my heart all broke on one sad day in june....

My bicycle
Yes. I left a meeting and started biking home. I was wondering why the ride felt a little rickety. I looked down. I got off. I felt the tire. Tooottally flat. Ugh. I biked for about half an hour (on a commute that would usually take about 15 minutes) on a completely flat tire. I ended the day with a workout, a flat tire, and my arms crossed. My one means of commuting in the city was now damaged BUT salvageable. I decided that i would have to wake up a few hours early to walk my bike (1 hour) to work where I could purchase the materials to fix my flat tire, get help to fix my tire, and be on time for work at noon.

I spent about an hour changing not only the tube, but the tire for my bike. The tire was only 2 months old. It was shitty quality and overpriced. I bought a good tire, a new tube, and fixed my tire. i had a huge smile on my face but no time. Once I repaired my bike, it was time to begin my eight hour shift, which meant that i would have to run my errands during my hour-long break. These errands were to buy a new cell phone, and to eat.

I grabbed my bike from the bike room and started biking off. I felt something funny as i walked my bike out the room. I looked down and saw that my front tire (the one that i hadn’t spent the entire morning replacing) and noticed that my brake pads were hitting the tire because my tire was slowly coming off the wheel. This was so weird. I had never seen something like it. it was as though my tire was trying to escape. I brought the bike into the bike room, where, luckily enough, my friend Frank (a dude who works in a bike shop and who became my friend once he helped fix my bike) was there to help me out. He helped me fix my wheel as fast as I could so that i could quickly be on my way. By the time i left, I had 45 minutes to eat and get a phone.

Your cell phone
Yes. Phones and technology ARE fallible. who would hav thunk?

I watched my phone die in a matter of days. I spent about half an hour one day plugging, unplugging, and re-plugging my phone into different sockets, convinced that it was neither my phone nor my battery charger that was broken, but rather the shitty electrical wiring in my house. I finally came to the terms with my cell phones fleeting moments when i realized that EVERY house has shitty electrical wiring...and so there was nothing i could do except for find a fone which had never-ending battery life.

So i went to my closest Bell Service Provider, which i quickly found out does not provide you with any service. After telling me that they could not fix my phone because of water damage, they told me to buy a new one. Apparently there is a little sticker in the back of the phone near the battery that turns pink when the phone has suffered water damage (sounds like a fatal drowning accident), but i am pretty convinced that they sell the phone with the pink sticker so that by the time someone walks into the store showing any dissatisfaction with their phone, the Bell employee will be able to give them an easy answer. “Sorry, we cannot fix this because your warrantee does not cover water damage,” (insert nerdy voice between quotation marks...like really nerdy....like those people you stereotypically never wanted to be associated with in high school). “You could have just damaged it simply walking in the rain.” In the rain? Are you kidding me? Stupid phone companies should be prepared to have their customers going outside. I was shocked to hear that this was too much to ask.

All in all, i decided to skip all the arguing, the temporary phone, and the waiting for the phone to come back from the magical cell phone shop where it will sit for days without anyone looking at it, and to buy a new phone. I asked them if they could help me out by activating it while i went to get my lunch. “Of course, go get your lunch. When you come back your phone will be ready for you.” I also asked them if they could charge the price of the phone to the same account that my bills were charged to, which was my father’s business. (i know...im a lucky lady) “Sure, no prob.” Sweet! I was off to get my lunch and then i would bike back to quickly pick up my phone and then race to work for the rest of my shift.

I did just that. I biked to the falafel shop, ate my falafel, and sped back to the Bell Mobility SERVICE Centre. As i was biking back i noticed the same brake-pad-hitting-the-tire (tire-escaping-off-the-wheel...however you want to think of it) problem i had at the beginning of my lunch hour. I was in such a hurry i decided to bike through it. I heard the rubbing sound get more pronounced with every turn of the wheel. It began to sound more frantic and frantic as i biked through it. It was my tire coming out for hair with every rotation. I biked with more and more anticipation. The frequent rubbing sound became heavier and heavier. More stressful and stressful until finally, it popped. My tire popped in a quick, thunderous blast! The tire collapsed in a matter of seconds, the wheel hitting the ground touching every little pebble below it. What did i do? i continued to bike through it. I had to get to my destination. I biked quickly down Queen Street West without turning my head to notice every single pedestrian and even a cab driver turn their head towards the sound (me? ...embarrassingly). I had to pick up my cell phone and get back to work whether it was the third, fourth, or fifth tire i popped that day.

I ran into the Bell store sweating and with a give-me-my-phone look-of-hunger in my eyes. They handed me the phone. “That will be 135$” No no no nono....they were supposed to charge the price of the phone to my billing account so that i would not have to pay anything.
“What?”
“That will be 135$”
“Nono...you were going to charge that to my account.”
“Oh....I didn’t understand what you meant.” Umm...then how did you understand now? I just repeated myself verbatim. Idiots. “We don’t do that here.”
“Well, i would only know that if you told me that. it is your responsibility to tell me i cant do that. How else would i know?”
“I am sorry, but we cant do that.”
“Well, I cannot pay for this.”
“Um....we just cant do that for you.”

Then i realized what they were doing. I knew EXACTLY what they were doing. I work in the service industry...i definitely knew what they were doing.

Now for all of you who do not work in the retail/service industry world, when you get a difficult customer--the kind that say i want to return this, i want that, i want 30 of this why cant you do that, fix this, etc. etc.--you just repeat yourself.

For example:
“Can you fix this?” (a yes or no question...i.e. you should be somewhat mentally prepared to hear a “no”)
“No, sorry. We don’t have those specific parts.”
“Why?”
“Sorry, it is made by a different company so we do not have the parts.”
“So you cannot help me?”
“No, sorry. We don’t have those parts”
“But I am getting progressively more irritated! Why cant you fix this?”
“We just do not have the parts.”
now, keep the conversation going until the customer decides that you cannot change the truth.

They were doing this to me. They were repeating themselves to ME! so i decided to do it back to them!!

“I cannot pay for this.”
“Um...we are sorry about the misunderstanding. But we cannot charge the phone onto your account.”
“you should be sorry about the misunderstanding. But i cannot pay for this.”
“But we cannot charge this to your account ma’am”
“i understand you (said very loudly and slowly as if speaking to a foreigner) I cannot pay for this.” (as if the money would magically APPEAR)

I left the cell phone store without the phone and ANGRY! and UPSET because after having spent my entire morning fixing my back tire, i knew that i would have to spend my entire evening fixing my FRONT tire. i mean, do all the irritating people and events need to make their way into your life ALL ON THE SAME DAY??

Last broken property of the day....
Your heart
Not that popping both your bike tires and having a broken phone isn’t enough, i also had a broken heart.

I often say "love" and make a shape of a heart with my hand. (dont ask why because it is not important to the story) Now on this very day in which everything in my life was breaking, my roomate came up to me and said, “maryam, you better be more careful with your heart. I think you are getting lazy with it. It is beginning to look like a peanut.”

The one last thing i had intact was now broken.

thanks a lot Leigh, you really topped off this day!