It was nice out after work, so we walked to our local pub for dinner. It’s an easy, ten-minute stroll each way. Dinner was fine, as it usually is there. On the way home, while we were waiting at the one stoplight on our route, three things happened quickly.
- A minor crash occurred about a hundred feet from us. (That unnatural sound of a collision makes me wince every time I hear it.) The light changed green, one car accelerated… but the car in front of it did not.
- While we gawked at the two crash test dummy cars pulled into the gas station at the intersection, a lady began hollering at us from the intersection. We turned around to see it was one of our friends, possibly slightly drunk, waving at and shouting happily at us.
- As our friends turned left to go the opposite direction, one of those fascinating Kei mini trucks came driving towards us. We watched it, rapt. It too turned into the gas station, and we could see that it was covered in bumper stickers that read things like TONKA and MICRO MACHINE. It pulled up near-ish to the two cars that’d crashed. Then the crosswalk changed, and we continued home.
It made for a marvelously melodramatic walk home.
We have semi-joked about getting a Kei mini truck sometime. To me, it’s the ideal truck: a bed large enough to actually haul things, and a reasonably sized footprint. Basically, everything that the modern truck is not. I’d love to have one. We joked(?) that if/when her car dies, maybe we’ll replace it with a mini-truck…
RECENTLY:
- The Secret Lives of Six Body Doubles
“I was like the body they pull out, like a chicken dinner. You know – bring out the breast, bring out the thighs, the legs.” - Patient Hugs Armed Man to Stop Him Bombing Hospital
LAST READ: SYCAMORE, Ian Rogers
LAST WATCHED THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978)
LISTENING: COMPLETE NOCTURNES, Frédéric Chopin (it was the kind of day where I spent several hours deciphering complex Excel formulas written by me a year ago and needed a chill soundtrack, and Chopin fit the bill)