Yesterday morning was quite surreal.
I’m driving to work, in somewhat of a, well, not really bad mood, just kind of on the ugly side of being a little bit homesick and missing a lot of stuff I used to do (weekend drives to Canada, stuff like that). Just kind of that blue funk - well beyond aquamarine, more of a teal with a bit of turquoise, but not quite navy. That kind of blue funk.
So I’m driving along, musing to my self and feeling rather blah, when I look over to the left lane, and there is a magnetic sign on the back of a pick-up truck, advertising a family deli, not too far from where I live. Regular sized lettering, no graphics, company name, address, phone number, and the magic word:
Spiedies.
I immediately grabbed the cell phone (Please note, I never do this while driving, but I did not want to lose the number or the name, and my notebook was in the backseat), popped in the name and number of the company (and actually had to do it all over again, since I tried putting the number in the name section of the phone book and it made no sense at all). About a mile later (traffic was slow and steady that morning - Fate must have slowed down the traffic so I could get the number in safely (we were tooling along at 55 and then dropped significantly). Got the info in the phone and pulled even to the truck (I was just off the bumper so I could get the info), stopped next to the truck at the traffic light and finally got the driver’s attention.
“Spiedies?”
“Yes.”
“Real Spiedies?”
“Yes.”
“Binghamton?”
“Endicott.”
“Real upstate New York Spiedies?”
“Yup.”
“Cool. I am heading there tomorrow for dinner.”
(Of course, this is the emotionless exchange, lacking the joy, exuberance, and woohoo-ing that accompanied my side of the conversation.) I thanked the driver, mentioned that I had missed upstate New York cuisine (again, add lots of ebulient gushing and gratitude), and continued on my way.
[SFX: cue “Twilight Zone” theme, building in gradual intensity]
I continue on my way, cheerful that I now have a source for my main addicition. (Did I mention I am a Spiedie lover? And that the last Speidie foray ended in disappontment and near-despair? - I burned them on the grill.)
A few miles later, I am near to work, in a considerably better mood, definitely important to my work.
I get off the interstate and wait at a traffic light, ready to turn left, about two miles from work. I am sitting behind a white “Pepsi” van, and the car next to me is blue. The light changes, I turn left, and as I turn the corner to go under the bridge, I glanced at my watch for a split second. When I look up again, I realized the Pepsi van is not in front of me. I look around, it is nowhere to be found anywhere on the road (there was a traffic light on the other side of the bridge, and it could not have run the light since there had been traffic ahead of it. I swear the van had utterly disappeared.
The van was replaced by a car.
Small car.
With a bumper sticker.
“I brake for vanishing hitchhikers - snopes.com”
Holy $@*%ing irony!!!
I finally caught up to the car, pulled along side and asked where they got the sticker (last I knew, Snopes did not sell bumperstickers). The driver said it was custom made, his wife worked with the website or message boards or something. I couldn’t talk for long, since Fate had increased the noise from the construction site and had now sped up the traffic, and people get a bit antsy when would hold up the flow.
So suffice to say, the day went better, and Fate guided me away from being involved in a three-car crash on the road home (the car who cut me off was not so lucky, and ended up plowing into the stopped traffic - I would have been the one to hit the the other cars if that …jerk… had not cut me off and I slammed on the brakes, giving me enough room to stop farther back from the accident).
His bumpersticker?
“Don’t like how I drive? Dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT!”
Heh. Eat muffler, more like it.
