Aluminum Eaters

Some bad weirdness in the air.  I'm stumbling around in another dimension, or at least I was yesterday.  I'd misplaced some things I badly needed about a week and a half ago, things I owed other people and some expensive things (for me) as well.  I looked everywhere high and low, in car trunks and three offices and all throughout my house.  Somebody had stolen them.  I was certain.

Two days ago, I picked up a backpack I never use.  It was heavy.  When I opened it, there were the things I'd been searching for.  I worried.

Yesterday morning, I got up at my usual hideously early time and went through my usual morning ablutions.  Then I went to the kitchen and took apart the complex machine that was given to me some time ago, cleaning the grinder and filter holder, replacing them and putting in a new filter.  The next step is always to go to the freezer to take out the coffee beans and to dump them in the grinder, to hit the switch and listen to the "ggrrrrr" while I go to the cabinet to get my powdered vitamins which go into a glass of water.  Etc.  Only I didn't do that.  Hundreds of years of doing the same thing, the same motions over and over and over, and this morning, I grabbed the vitamins first, tore open the package, and poured them into the coffee filter!!!  I wanted to find it funny like some 1930's movie with a distracted Cary Grant.  I wanted to, but I worried.

As always, before going to the daily torture, I worked on editing photos and "writing" my. . . whatever this is. . . before packing up to go.  I was carrying much yesterday and had several bags to haul to the car.  The last thing I did at my computer was take out two thumb drives and pick up my cell and put them in the usual place, the place they always reside, in the front pocket of a sling bag I carry always.

I transported everything to the car, locked the door, and left for work.  After a few minutes, I reached into the little front pocket of my bag for my cell.  It wasn't there.  I noticed, too, that only one thumb drive was in the pocket.  ????

I pulled over to search around in the car, certain that these items must have fallen out.  Floors, seats, crevices.  Nothing.  So I turned back and drove home and went inside certain that I would find them lying on a countertop.  Nope.  I searched and searched even though there were only a couple of places they could be.  You've done this.  You know.

I picked up the land line and called my cell, walking around the house to hear its ring.  Nothing.  I called it again and went to the car.  Zip.  And so I began to dig through everything again, but it was getting late and I needed to go.  I could replace the thumb drive.  Nothing irreplaceable there.  The phone, though.  Ah, heck, I thought, I need a new one anyway.  Mine is old and borrowed and only works well about half the time now.  Losing all the numbers stored on the card was the drag, but c'est la vie.

I decided to check the other bag for no reason at all.  I don't put things like my phone in there.  It was in the front pocket.  So I looked for the drive. It would have to be there.  No, no, no.

By now I was running really late.  Screw the drive, I said.  But that was not what bothered me.

The road that connects me to where I had to go lies between two lakes for some distance.  There is no other way to go, no way of turning somehow for an alternate route.  It was a parking lot.  In the usneen distance ahead there had been an accident and the only thing to do was close all lanes until the cars were cleared.

Fifteen minutes later, I was moving again.  And in a hurry.  But try as I may, I could make no progress.  Why?  Why?  There should be little traffic ahead.  But I was stuck behind a gold Mercury Marquis that drove the same 25 m.p.h. as the car in the lane next to it.  I have disconnected my horn for a reason.  But it is frustrating to only be able to pound the dashboard and yell.

Finally, however, the car in the right lane slowed to make a turn, and boom! I was around like a sonic blast, albeit a slow one.  Remember.  1985 Volvo.  And I began to make time.

Ahead I made my turn on to the highway--six frigging lanes of it--and was stuck behind a gold Mercury Marquis.  Not the same one.  No, it couldn't be, for I had been flying and it hadn't passed me.  But doubt creeps in, no?

A mile or two later, finally, traffic cleared enough to make my break, me pondering why people clump together and drive at the speed of the slowest car.  Lowest common denominator, I guess.

I don't need to tell you the next part.  Another gold Mercury Marquis.  What are the odds?  How many of them were made?  It was a nightmare, I was sure.  I was hallucinating.

Skip ahead.  When I arrived at work and was performing my duties, someone asked me for something that was on the drive that I couldn't find.  I told the story--the entire story--and to make my point, I tore open the "other" bag, the one in which I found my phone.  And there, in another pocket, completely separated from the pocket in which I had found the phone. . . .

I am still loopy from it all.  I wouldn't have done that.  Why?  I've never done that.  I'm really worried.  It is a Gothic tale, of sorts.  "Did it really happen, or was it all a dream?  Think what you will, but from this day forward. . . ."

I will have to quit eating so much aluminum.