LA Earned It's City of Angels Title Last Night

This month marks my fifth anniversary in Los Angeles. My relationship with the City of Angels has been one mostly filled with love and harmony. The culture, the art, the music, the food, the climate all overshadow the shitty traffic and the smog. The only thing I haven't really learned to love are the people.

When I first moved to La La Land I was something of a bumpkin. My neighborhood back home smelled like cow crap because of it's proximity to dairy farms and I'd never lived further than five miles from my parents. Transplanted from the safe, quiet streets of Gilbert to the homeless laden corners of Hollywood was a bit of a culture shock. Instead of running scared back to the warm, predictable cradle of home I dove head first into learning to love this place.

Wide eyed visitor that I was in the early days of living here, I became acutely aware that this city pulsed with a wound up energy I wasn't accustomed to. In Gilbert drivers slowed down to let Grams cross the street, in LA they laid on the horn. And in the aisles of the grocery store people averted their eyes, distracted themselves with their phone or their iPod and otherwise generally ignored each other. After awhile I started feeling like I was living in a city of robots and I sincerely wondered how I would ever make friends here. What shocked this lil girl from cow town most was that people wouldn't hang up the fucking phone to order coffee or pay for their groceries. Seriously? Who could you possibly be talking to that it can't wait twenty seconds? Jesus? I saw this as a lack of basic human courtesy and it irked me to the core.

And so over time I've come to accept the dead-eyed expressions of the Beverly Hills housewives crowding the nail salons and the collar-popped douche bags at the gym who talk on their phone while they jog on the treadmill- these are the people of my city, love it or leave it.

Last night though I was reminded that LA people aren't all soulless, self-involved narcissists. Last night I needed help and the universe answered.

I stopped at the market on my way home from work for dinner and wine. I was moving at my usually frenzied pace, eager to get home and kick off my too tight heels, get into jammies and curl up on the couch with my book. I got into my car and turned the key and the engine moaned and groaned and then went dead. Shit.

I clasped my hands in my lap as my mind started to race with ways to fix this shit. I didn't have jumper cables, or Triple A, or a friend in close proximity. So I did what I always do when I need rescuing. I called K. No answer. Dammit! Okay, relax I told myself as I thought of plan B. I'll just call my roommate Rachel and see if she can at least pick me up so I don't have to sleep in the parking lot of Ralph's. She answered, yay!!! And was visiting her family in Arizona, boo!!! Next option... I thought of my friends who I could call for help. Marc? In New York. Lindsay? Working. Nadia? At school. My ex-boyfriend slash ex-best friend Adam? He won't even respond to my texts anymore. Dammit, dammit, dammit! So I started crying and I called my dad. Yes, I am a twenty eight year old woman, living alone in another state and the best answer I could come up with in a jam is to call my papa. I guess some things never change.

My dad answered! Trying to hold back tears so I did't sound like a pathetic pussy I explained that K didn't answer, Marc is out of town, Lindsay is at work and so on.

"Okay, okay. Why don't you just go inside the grocery and ask if someone has jumper cables?" my dad asked his smooth voice comforting me like an old stuffed animal.

Oh right, duh. So I went inside and feeling a lot like an eight year old version of myself, I asked with tear stained cheeks if anyone had jumper cables. The manager looked blankly at me and then yelled to no one in particular, "Anybody got jumper cables?" No one looked in our direction. "Hey Mike, you got jumper cables?" she asked the tall, pimply faced kid running the cashier in the next lane. Mike shrugged and shook his head no. "Jose! Hey Jose," she yelled as Jose looked at us, "you got cables to jump her car?" Jose was no help either. And then suddenly a beam of golden angelic light shined down from the heavens and the pretty dark haired girl walking by said, "I do. I have cables. Come on, I'll help you."

"Ohmigod thank you so much. You are totally saving my ass," I said, the words rushing out quickly. "Do you know how to hook it up?" I asked her as an afterthought.

"Uh, well I'm not really sure. I think it's positive on positive right?" she asked and I realized I was only halfway out of the woods. I shrugged and grimaced in an ugly way that said beats the fuck out of me!

We parted so that she could pull her car next to mine and a man got out of the car parked beside me. He was short and round with a nice face and he said, "Do you need help? I saw you in your car and you looked distressed." Guardian angel number two. Thank you Lord.

She pulled up, he took over and was sweet enough to give us both a lesson in how to jump a car, explaining what he was doing as he did it. In moments my car was purring.

"You probably need a new battery," he told me, something that despite my inability to know where the little lever was to pop the fucking hood, I had actually concluded already.

"I figured I'd just drive it home and then call the mechanic in the morning. Maybe they make house calls?" I asked hopefully, knowing he would have no idea.

"You could probably just drive it straight to Sears and they'll put one in," he said.

Ooh, great idea. I'm not touching that greasy shit. I thought to myself. "Thanks! I'll call now."

It took me a few minutes to get through to someone who told me matter-of-factly that they close at seven. I looked at the clock on my dash. It read 7:05. I hung up feeling a bit defeated. He must have seen it on my face.

"They're closed?" he asked. I shook my head yes and bit my lower lip. "Listen, why don't we just go to Pep Boys? I'll follow you there and see if we can get one of the guys there to drop it in," he said in the calm, confident way that older men seem to have.

"Are you sure?" I asked weighing the risk of letting a stranger help me against the hassle of trying to handle this alone.

"Of course. I was just waiting for a call from a head hunter anyway. He must be tied up with something else. Come on let's go," he said as he got in his car.

I was mad at this head hunter for leaving him hanging- he was obviously a good person and I hoped good career karma for him as we drove to the store.

He went in as I waited in my still running car. And then he came out with a wrench, unbolted the thingys holding the battery in and told me to come inside with him. He had already looked up what battery I needed, pulled it from the shelf and carried it up front to the cashier. I looked at his grease covered hands and my heart filled up with gratitude. I was clearly a fish out of water in this big box of a store that smelled like rubber.

He put my new battery in and explained what he was doing so that next time I wasn't such a helpless retard. When he finished black grease covered his hands and a smudge of it found its way to his nose. I couldn't say thank you enough and so I gave him a big hug and told him he was my guardian angel. He shrugged and a shy smile spread across his face.

I had learned he works in the building Dr. D. operates in and I made sure to ask which suite before we parted. A nice bottle of wine would be coming his way for saving me.

I think it's interesting how just when we get so stuck in our ideas of what is true about the world, our city, the people around us, something happens to shake that up. To remind us that we don't know it all, that we aren't always right and that there is goodness in people.