The good news is that my wife got her income tax refund cheque the other day. We're just waiting for the bad news.
Oh, it'll come, make no mistake. We don't know just what will happen, but sometime in the next few days, we will find ourselves with a whopping big bill to pay, a bill that only slightly exceeds what she got back from the Canada Revenue Agency..
Last year it was the car. All winter, it started like a dream. One turn of the key and vrooom. Then one day the letter carrier came with her income tax refund.
As he walked up thedriveway, the cheque started giving off littlenuclear virusesthat caused the car to be broken. It would no longer vrroom. I went out, lifted the hood,and looked into the place where Iassumed they keep the engine and stuff.
I stood there for fifteen minutes not doing much of anything except yelling "Try it again, try it again," to my wife. So she would try it again, and again it wouldn't start.
In the end, wehad it towed to a gas station, where a guy named Frank told me I needed a new something or other. I believe he said amplifier.
I asked Frank what it would cost, and - well, quelle surprise! Including parts, labour, and towing fees, the bill came to about eight dollars more than what we got back from the Income Tax people. I don't know why they even bother to send us a
cheque. They should just mail it to Frank and eliminate the middle man.
It never fails. A couple of years ago, we got
some money from out of the blue. I mean really out of the blue.
Some relative nobody ever heard of died in England and left his entire fortune to his cousin's grandchildren in Canada. That was us.
Now, it wasn't much as far as fortunes go - once it was all split up, everybody got about two grand. Still, that's not bad, considering we never knew the guy. My wife and I were trying to decide
between taking a trip or buying an air conditioner when the front steps fell off the house. Just like that. Whoomph. Two grand.
It's like there's this evil spirit watching over
us. If I'm sifting through some old pants and come across a twenty dollar bill, I know that within minutes the paper boy will ring the front door bell. Now, you could argue that he was probably
on his route that day and would have showed up anyway, but you'll never convince me. I know for a fact that if I had come up with lint, paper clips, and three week old Lotto 649 tickets - as usual - that kid would be home watching the hockey game.
Of course, things like that never work in reverse. If my front steps had fallen off all on their own, that old English guy would probably still be alive and kicking and planning to leave all his money to his cat or something. And if he croaked and willed all his cash to Tiger the cat, my porch would still be there. No, there are some dark forces at work, all aimed at making my life as joyless and frustrating as possible.
This morning I went down the basement to get a shirt out of the laundry room. As my feet hit the floor - or, more accurately, the lush carpeting we installed down there because in eight years we've never had so much as a drop of water in the basement - I heard a wet, squooshy sound And my feet were instantly wet and cold.
I don't know what the problem is. I don't have to know.
All I need to know is what it will cost. And I can find that out by looking at my wife's tax refund cheque and adding about eight dollars.
I just hope I never win a lottery. I don't want
to think about what might happen if I ever won fifty million.
Nils Ling's book "Truths and Half Truths" is a collection of some of hismostmemorable and hilarious columns. To order your copy, send a cheque or money order for $25.00 (taxes, postage and handling included) to RR #9, 747 Brackley Point Road, Charlottetown, PE, C1E 1Z3
