That, My Friends, is the Elephant on the Highway

As I waited in the waiting room (where else did you think I'd be waiting) at MoBap for my lab test, I noticed a peculiar behavior amongst the staff. No, it wasn't the insurance-info-taker who told me I reminder her of her ex-husband's new wife. It was the various lab-testers who came to pick up the paperwork and call their testees. Heh, heh. I said testees!

They would grab the form, peer at it a moment, and then start walking around the large waiting room full of waiters. Let me tell you, almost ever seat was taken. Hick and I had to settle for two chairs in a corner, with a table between them, under the TV. So all we heard was the sound of Chester Lampkin giving the weather. It's a good thing the grabbers walked around looking for their grabbees.

At first, I thought the Grabbers were playing some kind of game. Like somebody was telling them through a tiny ear receiver, "You're warm. Warmer. Cold! Cold! Warm. Warmer. RED HOT!" Then they knew they were standing in front of their Grabbees. Silly me. It dawned on me that I had given my driver's license to the info-taker. Obviously, they had printed out a picture on the form, so that the Grabbers were just looking for a particular face.

When my Grabber came, she took a few minutes. Of course, she DID have to go from one corner of the room to the opposite corner to find me under the TV. She stopped in front of me, a fairly pregnant bespectacled lady in scrubs, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. "Val?" I was so proud of her, I almost clapped. I got up and followed.

When we cleared the waiting room and started up the hall, I said, "I guess it's a good thing it took you a minute to recognize me from that driver's license photo. It's terrible! This gives me hope that it doesn't really look like me. It's so hideous that even my mom laughs."

Grabber kept walking. "Oh, I haven't seen your photo. There are no pictures on our paperwork."

Huh! How do they do it? Are those Grabbers like Long Island Mediums? Do they try to judge by height and weight? Or did she know that info-taker's ex-husband and had met his new wife, and info-taker put a note on there about it? I never did figure out how Grabber knew my identity...even though we spent some intimate time together.

As for the elephant...this was no case of the elephant in the room. As we cruised up I-270 in the middle of six lanes, traffic flying by on both sides, I saw a curious sight. That's because I was pointedly ignoring Hick with his one eye, sweaving like a master, taking one hand off the wheel to point to a trailer with ramps to tell me how he needed to fix his own trailer with ramps. I looked to the far left lane, the high-speed lane, and saw a red truck pass by with an elephant laying down in the back. Its trunk stuck out over the tailgate. True, it was not a real live elephant. It was a bit of a misshapen elephant suited for a miniature golf course. But still, I saw an elephant riding in the back of a little red truck on I-270. If only I had been able to snap a picture.

Now I have two mysteries to try to solve. The elephant, and how that Grabber recognized me.