Intuition

Well...after eight years of impeccable service, our '97 4Runner had a spell today.  As I write this, I wait to hear the news from the shop.  My intuition tells me that the timing belt broke.  Of course, this is what I call useless intuition.  If I had heeded a piece of useful intuition, a tidbit that has been interjecting itself into my thought process for two weeks now, I wouldn't be having this problem.  That piece of useful intuition that bombarded my brain for days was:  it's time to replace the timing belt on the 4Runner.

Intuition is a wonderful thing.  Unfortunately, it's also a close companion with Monday morning quarterbacking.  In other words, I seldom think about intuition until I fail to follow it.  Then I realize all those thoughts I've been having about something...thoughts that tend to the nagging side...were meant to be helpful.  I do remember a time about 42 years ago when my young family at the time was traveling between Fayetteville and Chattanooga.  The only way to get there was to go up what is known as Monteagle Mountain: two lanes and curvy.  Anyway, something told me to pull over on the side of the road prior to the ascent.  So, I pulled my little robin egg blue Maverick to the side and sat there for several minutes.  Finally, a tractor trailer came down the mountain and passed us.  Something told me it was okay to continue, so I pulled back onto the highway and started up the mountain.  As I drove along, I noticed serious damage on both sides of the road...trees down, rocks scraped, and lots of black rubber marks on the asphalt.

It was obvious that the tractor trailer I had watched exit the mountain had been a runaway and had careened back and forth along that road for about three miles.  Long enough, heavy enough, and fast enough to gobble up and spit out a little robin egg blue Maverick with a young couple and a two year old inside.

Yeah, intuition is interesting.  Take Aeschylus, for example.  A Greek tragedian of the likes of Sophocles and Euripides, living somewhere around 500 B.C and a veteran of the Persian Wars.  You can still read his stuff if you're interested.  "Prometheus Bound" is my favorite.

Anyway, Aeschylus spent the last years of his life outdoors because of his intuition telling him that he was going to be killed by a falling object.  In fact, it had been prophesied, so his intuition had pretty decent backing.  So old Aeschylus is sitting outside one day, as far from the trees and boulders as he could get, leaning back and thinking about his next tragedy and getting some sun on his face, when an eagle flew overhead.  Seems like mister eagle had just managed to snag a nice, fat tortoise for his lunch and was looking for a big round rock to drop it on to crack the shell.  When he spotted what he thought was the perfect turtle shell cracking rock, he let go with the skill of an ace bomber in a B57.

Yes, the eagle had spotted Aeschylus' shiny bald head and the intuitive tragedian suffered death by turtle.

Really great intuition.  Really bad timing.

Like me...really great intuition...really bad timing belt.