“…and to celebrate the gift of life as we have it, or else life becomes a task, rather than a gift. We must always listen to the song in our heart, and share that song with others.” – Mattie J.T. Stepanek

Following my trip to Peru, a miracle happened…

This time last year, I was guiding my way out of my 6th job of the year, working in a pawn shop disguised as a “Fine Art Gallery” where my boss was hoarding my pay and his pee in the back office…

Having initially signed up to work in Corporate America as the means to getting myself back to Peru for my birthday, I did not expect to have this job waiting for me when I returned…

On the contrary… my boss announced to our entire department what a glorious trip I had just been on, encouraged others to go out and do the same, and encouraged me to enter one of my photos in our departments photo competition… winning the competition, I have now become known as the “special one”, the “free spirit” of our very conservative corporation… yet despite my  forgetting about 99.9% of what I actually do on a weekly basis,  and even though my head and heart are always dancing in the clouds… somehow, I don’t know how exactly, this is turning out to be one of the longest held jobs I have ever had… (who’d have thought?! 😉 )

Being an assistant, one aspect of my job requires that I anticipate the needs of our Executives, organizing logistics and transportation. Having received the request from one of our Executives at 6:00am to order a car, I figured this request could wait until I was at my desk by 9:00am…

Living in a post-apocalyptic New York City following Hurricane Sandy, rowing through life (aka not paying attention to the mainstream news), I completely forget about this request, and learn 5 minutes before the car is needed that there is no gas in the city…

Frantically calling every single corporate car service in the city, I discover that not only are my skills in anticipating corporate needs completely non-existent, but none of the car services, nor their partners, had gas!

Out of curiosity, I thought I’d call the  East Harlem El Bario luxury car service (the very affordable service I use to go to the airport) to see if they had gas, and by the good graces of God, they did…

Scheduling a car to pick up the three Executives stranded in the Bronx, the first two cars I ordered came, and for reasons unknown left… after another hour of back and forth communication trying to organize this pick up- finally, a car came…

Now, for the record, when our Executives order car service, the cars that arrive are always on the high-end luxury side… we’re talking black Mercedes, BMW’s, Lexus, Escalades, Hummers… the men driving are always well-groomed, well-dressed, are well versed in English, and are for the most part trained to be Executive chauffeurs- there is no talking…

As El Bario is considered the high-end/ luxury service for East Harlem, my experiences have always been in a very nice, clean, safe, SUV-hybrid types of car… this time round, however, we were sent a screeching green, run-down Mini-van packed with baby supplies, and a woman driver…

Three extremely sheltered, conservative white men in suits + in the Bronx + screeching green mini-van + a hispanic woman driver who barely speaks English… (oh my god, this cannot be happening!)

Feeling that I had either won brownie points for being resourceful (or I was about to lose my job)… when the Executives arrived back into the office- they were sweating, red in the face, jackets off, ties undone, and completely flustered… as the team lead approached my desk- I held my breath…

Turns out, the driver got lost, made several illegal U-turns, drove through three red-lights, came to screeching halts whenever they weren’t passing through red lights, was screaming out the window yelling obscenities in Spanish — the car was in such a poor condition they thought they saw one of the tire rims roll away… meanwhile the sheltered conservatives felt that this could quite possibly be their last day alive, so they decided to make the most of it, and they had fun…

“Ro, this was by far, the funniest, most entertaining car ride, I have ever had, in my entire life… We thought we were going to die, so we decided to make jokes to try laugh it off, and boy did we laugh, I haven’t laughed this hard since I don’t know when— After Sandy, and everything that’s been happening because of it, on behalf of everyone I have to say that we all really really needed this… Thank you 🙂 “

(Pheeewww!)

Here’s to still keeping one of the longest held jobs I have ever had!   😉

“A playful path is the shortest road to happiness.”

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
– Neal Donald Walsch