I Know Why the Wedged Ford Dings

Sometimes I think I'm simply in the right place at the wrong time. Other times I resign myself to the fact that weirdos find me like cast-off Bubble Yum finds my shoe sole on the melting blacktop of an Ole Miss parking lot in the second week of July.

Perhaps you remember my encounter this weekend with a blue sedan at Gus's Pretzels. Or, more precisely, T-Hoe's unfortunate encounter with the passenger door  of the ignoramus who got out of that blue sedan.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached the drive-thru bays of my tiny hometown bank when I saw a blue sedan at the ATM this afternoon. But, you know, I was not going to the ATM, so I entered the parking lot and drove around back to the drive-thru area.

Let the record show that my little bank has the ATM built into the back wall. The cars leaving the ATM drive straight on through, along the building, under the drive-thru canopy to get out. Then we have a business lane. Then two drive-thru lanes for regular people.

I had no interest in the ATM or business lane. I usually take the first drive-thru lane so I can make a not-too-sharp right turn and go down the alley behind the bank when I leave. Not an alley like Jerry's grandma got frightened in when she tried to find her bank branch that had closed, after Jerry finally signed all those checks she had given him over the years. An alley with backyard gardens on one side, and the bank drive-thru lot on the other. An alternate road to get back to where I came from.

No sooner had I pointed T-Hoe toward my chosen drive-thru than that blue sedan surged across the entrance to it. Not even kidding. That blue sedan made a 90-degree right turn from the ATM to try and get in my drive-thru. That's not even gonna work. Banks have big concrete built-up island thingies between the lanes, with rounded ends to kind of funnel car tires in when people don't judge the lanes very well. Like Blue Lady.

"LOOK! I think we'll go to this lane on the end today, even though it will make my turn harder. That car's not getting in that lane for a few minutes. I think we can beat them if we take the end one."

I pulled T-Hoe up to the canister-holding money-sucker and grabbed that tube to stuff in my deposit. I heard a most hideous grinding and squeaking of plastic on concrete.

"This can't be good."

"Nope. No one's getting in there now." The Pony is nothing if not matter-of-fact.

I turned to look for myself, and saw that blue sedan completely blocking the drive-thru lane entrance. It could not have been more precise if my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel had aligned it with a ruler she might have kept locked up in the metal storage cabinets of my old classroom.

Did I mention that Blue Lady was gassing that sedan like nobody's business, tires smoking, low-profile bumper bending? She was like a turtle stuck on a post. She was going nowhere. The scent of burnt rubber hung in the haze. Another car pulled in as if to wait on that lane. Oh, not-heaven no! It drove up behind me to for a sure thing. Somehow Blue Lady got her shell off the post, and backed/surged/backed/surged/thumped/grinded/squealed her way to the canister in her lane.

"I would have got in this lane easier, but I thought you had a window in the wall." She hollered it. Like there are no microphones and the teller had to hear through the bullet-proof glass. I tried to glance at her undercarriage, to see what she had messed up, but all I noticed was her black plastic bumper drooping a corner. I finished my transaction and hit the alley before she got herself stuck between that red metal pole they put up to keep people from tumbling off the embankment, and a utility-man climber-scarred telephone pole.

This is exactly why the elderly should keep their money in a coffee can in a cabinet over the oven, or in a sock buried in the back yard. Don't let the elderly drive to the bank.

So...I am thinking of starting a journal. The Blue Sedan Diaries, I could call it. And if all goes well, I might be able to stretch it into a book, which I would call A Series of Unfortunate Encounters. Yep. I don't have a drop of Baudelaire blood coursing thinly through my veins, but I feel a book bubbling up. It might even be made into a movie. Which would have to be rated R, of course. Because these encounters might frighten the young 'uns. The lady today was not as scary as that door-slamming ignoramus.

I'm really glad I did not cross Blue Lady's path at the gas station.