Sometimes Two Cars Can Share The Same Road

Do you hear that music? That wacky instrumental that begins one of those crime scene SUV shows. That song everybody calls Teenage Wasteland? "Who?" you ask? Yes. The Who. Baba O'Riley. That song.

I am playing it right now. Not instrumentally, of course. I may have my own garage band, but I'm not that good. I'm playing it on my computer, on the #1 son's Zune account thingy that he charges me half for each payment period, so I'm gonna use it, by cracky! That haunting riff was playing in my mind this evening on the way home.

I had some business to attend to. The Pony was planning to spend the night at his grandma's house. I picked her up at the park so she could ride along. Then I dropped them both off and proceeded to one of my three financial institutions to complete my trifecta. As I turned right out of that parking lot, using the proper signal, of course, an older model Jeep Cherokee started to pull onto the same lane from street-side parking. He saw me and turned his wheel back. Then pulled out behind me. I bore him no ill will. He was looking at the road proper, not expecting me to come out of that lot a mere twenty feet behind him.

That JC turned right when I did, down past my mom's church, then left to wind past the old mineral museum that's now a funeral home, past the glass factory, over some railroad tracks, down to the four-way stop with the sometimes-open sno-cone shack, to the next four-way stop by the old 7-11, past the tool factory, around the curve where Farmer H's old friend broke his leg by shearing off a telephone pole, left by my mom's bank that shorted her ten dollars this summer, up the winding road past the shooting range, over some more tracks, past the ranch of Farmer H's buddy who we told I was a game warden's daughter when he shot a deer before sunrise on opening day, past the lake, down the street with the tree at a 45-degree angle that I know is going to clobber me, past the five-way stop by the library, past the dead-mouse-smelling post office.

I was starting to smell a rat. How odd that such a stranger would take my very detailed route. Did the JC guy think, perhaps, that I had money on me from that financial institution? Long holiday weekend money? Was he going to ram me, dismember me, rob me? I needed a plan, and I needed it now. I figured that if JC turned right past the funeral home, followed me past the mushroom factory, and turned onto the gas station chicken lot with me...I would keep driving right around back, and go to my second choice store for my 44 oz. Diet Coke. And if JC caught onto my shenanigans, I would keep driving around that lot, and go straight across to the police station. Heh, heh. THEN we'd see who was following who.

Sigh. JC's route diverged from mine at the dead-mouse-smelling post office.

Sometimes, I have kind of an active imagination.