Sweet Gummi Mary! I waited in line 12 minutes on Wednesday at Dairy Queen. I like to go there to pick up lunch, you know. Two chicken strips with honey mustard sauce, and three giant pretzel sticks with queso sauce, all for the low, low price of $4.33. It's a great complement to a 44 oz Diet Coke!
Anyhoo... Dairy Queen is usually very busy. Like 10 or 12 cars in line busy. But Wednesday, there was only ONE CAR AHEAD OF ME! Nobody was even waiting at the window. Just a single car, at the drive-thru ordering speaker. I nosed T-Hoe up to its bumper, and waited my turn. And WAITED!
Normally, the DQ people are speedy. I can judge my time in line by 2 minutes per car. Believe you me, I've had plenty of chances to count ahead and watch the clock. Sometimes they're even quicker, unless those carloads of Chicken Strip Basket people show up.
Anyhoo... it must have taken that car 5 minutes to order! I don't know if they were asking someone to read the full menu to them, or what. I wish I had taken a picture, but I kept thinking any minute they would pull forward. Once they did, I had my food ordered in 10 seconds. I'm a pro. And a regular.
So slow was the progress of this SINGLE CAR ahead of me that I had time to memorize the details in case they were actually committing a crime. It was a gray Buick LeSabre. Uh huh. A big cruiser. And OPC (Old People Car). Old ladies out on the town. The driver had glasses and frizzy red-tinted dyed hair. The passenger had gray hair in a perm favored by old ladies who go to the beauty shop once a week. (I hope she wore a mask!) The back seat passenger had straight, soft-looking strawberry blonde hair.
WAIT A MINUTE! That back seat passenger never moved! As I crept closer, I saw that it was not a back seat passenger at all, but a stuffed dog (hopefully not real!) curled up as if asleep, on the back dashboard of the gray Buick LeSabre!
What in the NOT-HEAVEN! Maybe I should wear my glasses while driving...
Anyhoo... I guess these ladies had asked for separate tickets. Because while paying, two sets of cash, and two sets of returned money and receipts exchanged hands, courtesy of the hands coming out the window of the LeSabre and the window of Dairy Queen.
The gray-permed passenger kept waving cheerily. I suppose she knew people working inside, though I hesitate to assume she was a regular. She would have known what she was getting, and been faster! It looked like they each got a shake. And then waited and waited some more. FINALLY, the DQ window hands held out two identical bags. They looked exactly like my soon-to-be handed chicken strip and pretzel bag!
One key detail I don't want to forget was the DREAMCATCHER hanging from the rearview mirror of the gray Buick LeSaber.
3 comments:
That dreamcatcher caught your dream of getting in and out quickly, and tangled it up in its web...
Perhaps they were checking individual ingredients in all the items available in case there are things that might set off an elderly digestive system and cause undue stress later.
Sioux,
I was there so long, I could have had a deep-sleep rapid-eye-movement dream for it to catch!
***
River,
Mayhap they were, mayhap they weren't...
Genius used to quote MAYHAP to me, after reading The Stand. I think it was one of Mother Abigail's expressions. At least he wasn't quoting Randall Flagg! That's more like The Pony's territory.
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