Be right, right now.

It was late one night.
probably about midnight,
and I, being the sensible person that I am,
decided it must be time to call it a night.
I locked up my office, and headed for home,
but as I left the building something was different,
something was missing.
It was my bike.
yep true story. At first I was confused.
Did I bring my bike?
yes I must have, my car wasn't there either.
So I searched a little, but still no bike.
I guess the first thing I noticed was that I wasn't worried.
I mean why should I be, It's not like gas was really expensive,
or like I didn't have plenty of money to buy a new bike,
a bike much nicer than the one that I had.
It's not like I spent hundreds of dollars on it,
and saved for years before I could purchase it,
It's not like I'd had it long enough to become attached.
It's not like my mom would freak out if she knew.

Oddly enough I wasn't worried,
I wanted to worry, but I couldn't,
So I did what any logical person would do,
I started walking.
I only live about two miles from work,
and it hadn't started to get really cold yet.
so I walked.
I passed some kids playing with my bike,
and I thought, hmm that could be mine.
but how would I know it was really dark.
really dark.
And I walked. I just kept walking,
And as much as I wanted to worry I couldn't.
The whole weekend I had no bike,
In fact I was so not worried that I forgot it was gone.
Then monday when I got to work I just worked.
The bike spot I've chosen was pretty much empty.
and by that I mean there was nothing there.
But I guess I didn't care, I just went back to work.
After a while my landlord came to see me.
A neighbor had called him, and said he thought he had something of mine. So at lunch I went next door. Next door to a little motel. There safe in his store room, was my lovely old bike.

And now for the moral of the story.

In order to give you the moral,
I have to tell the story from another perspective.
(the names have been changed (because I didn't know them to begin with)other details, may or may not be correct)

Gus was a man of extremely bad fortune.
Gus was a victim of 9/11. No gus wasn't in the tower, when terror attacked. but gus was affected nonetheless. He didn't have the greatest job, but it was a job. It paid the bills, and that was enough. But then something happened, and it wasn't good. Gus lost his job. See when terrorists attack, they don't think about people, they think about glory, and causes, and retaliation. Yet somehow they forget to think about gus, but what had gus done for them. the economy went south, not irreparibly, but many were hurt. And Gus was one of them. For years he went on, from one job to the next, he just wanted to be happy, but his life kept falling apart. So gus started drinking. It didn't fix anything, but it seemed to numb his pain. In fact it numbed everything. He lost a few jobs, and left a few others, nothing was working, nothing at all.
He cashed his last check and packed up his bags. It was time to start over.
somehwere, anywhere, anywhere but here.
This is where my story meets his.
He stopped here in town,
he stopped here next door.
He unpacked his bike, and he went for a ride.
The area was amazing. he felt so free.
This was all he wanted. His bike gave him freedom,
and that was all he had left.

He rode for a while then came back to the hotel.
reality hit, life was still a mess.
So off he went, to drown out his sorrows.
He was gone quite a while, it must have been hours,
and when he got back, his bike had moved.
It wasn't far off, but it definately wasn't where he left it.
it wasn't locked, but why would he lock it,
so he picked it up, and walked it back home,
He decided he'd better not be so careless this time, so he parked it in his room.
And there it stayed, all that night.
then in the morning, as he started to leave, he noticed something,
He had two bikes. One in his room, and one down below, out on the porch, where he had left it. Well gus had a problem, he'd done something wrong,
But gus wasn't stupid, it was going to stop there. He didn't know where the second bike had come from (being drunk can do that), but he knew it wasn't his.
So he parked it by the rail, out in front of his room.
There were a lot of things that he could have done, And a lot of them were worse.
But he wasn't a bad person, he just made some mistakes.
Well by now you should know, what happened to my bike,
the manager found it, and called me to return it.

Suddenly there was restitution. What was wrong became right. Everyone had what was rightfully theirs. And this is my point. When Gus realized the bike wasn't his he stopped using it. By stopping his wrongness, he became right, but he had to admit he was wrong. Sure he could have just kept it, pretended it was his, taken it to a pawn shop to pick up some cash, but he didn't. He decided to be right, right now. Now things would have been different if he had realized sooner, he could have looked down, and noticed a difference, as he was taking it home. Then Gus would have returned it, and probably found his. Gus could have left town with it, then where would I be. I guess the moral is that the sooner we admit that we have been wrong the sooner we can start to enjoy being right. It doesn't really matter how wrong we have been. What matters most is whether or not we are right, right now.