It’s beginning to feel a lot like weirdness
Writing by treason on Friday, 23 of December , 2005 at 10:11 pm
My attempt to avoid traffic and shopping areas until 2006 failed today when I realized that
Old Mother Hubbard and I had more than dogs in common. Knowing I had to prepare a holiday meal and knowing I had no main course in the house, I had to take a deep breath and hit the road.
I drove past the big shopping mall that’s about a mile from the house. For years you could fire a cannon in the place and not hit a soul, but this year it’s been packed. Traffic is always tricky because people seem to realize at the last second that they need to be at that mall. Without signaling or even looking, a person will cut across three lanes of traffic to turn into the mall parking lot. One needs to be on the alert.
But what I needed was not at this mall. What I needed was at the giant discount warehouse store. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as crowded as I’d expected and the lines were actually shorter than usual. How odd, I thought, but I’m not about to complain. I still didn’t have what I needed for Sunday’s dinner, but I figured I could pick up last minute items on Christmas Eve.
Things were going well until I had to get out of the parking lot and head home. I needed to turn left, but that traffic flowed from the main drag into more malls - and it was backed-up. I quickly inventoried in my head what I had just purchased and wondered how long it could sit in the car. Two days? Three?
In a panic, I turned right instead of left, then immediately realized my error. For some reason I thought I’d be able to get out on the main street and make a U-turn, forgetting for reasons I still do not understand (perhaps my mind was clouded by the dopamine rush caused by discovering super cheap contact lens solution on my trip) that the street went straight up a steep hill all the way to the next city with no opportunity to turn around anywhere. And traffic was at a standstill. I’d just turned on the radio and heard the bad news. At the top of the hill, where the monster corporation sits, there had been a terrible accident. People were being airlifted out and there was at least one fatality. The road was officially closed.
All I could think is that if my car radio wasn’t always tuned into our big news-talk station, I would never have known I was trapped. I looked to my left. There was a non-stop stream of cars and no way I could make a quick U-turn and head the opposite direction. All of a sudden, the turn lane was empty with no cars in sight. I had room and time to turn around and head towards home. I was so happy, I let the others behind me who were looking for escape routes to pull in front of me.
It took about half an hour to drive a mile, but I spent that time thinking about the accident. They happen everyday, but they’re especially awful around the holidays. But later that night, after I’d fallen asleep on the couch, I heard T open the garage door and drive away. It was 2:00 AM. That’s when I heard the helicopter.
I went out to the front of the house and watched it circle our neighborhood. A circling helicopter in your neighborhood is never a good thing. I figured it was stupid to be out so I went back inside and waited for T to reappear. He finally did and explained that the street at the bottom of our hill was closed and lined with police cars. An officer had flagged him down and asked for identification. It appears that someone that we didn’t know but the cops were familiar with had broken into a department store in the strip mall down the street and nailed another safe. They thought he was hiding in the luxury apartments (the ones we love to walk the dogs through because they’re so beautifully landscaped and home to so many bunnies). The apartment complex and our neighborhood were on lockdown. We had a SWAT situation that lasted for hours.
This is going to be an unusual Christmas, I told myself. It’s bad enough that I’ve felt off-kilter lately; for some weird reason I have a strange metallic taste in my mouth that won’t go away. It started a week ago and I didn’t think anything of it at first. Then we decided to walk the dogs through the shopping center near the river, and T thought it would be a good idea to pick up Chinese take-out from the place we used to go when we first moved here and it was the only Chinese restaurant around. Since that time much has happened, including my aversion to Thai and Chinese food. I don’t know why, but one day I had Thai food for dinner and I got deathly ill. A fluke, I’d thought. The next time I had Thai, I puked it up again. And the next time, too. I started to think that it was time to give up Thai.
But it was also Chinese. This last excursion was the clincher. I can no longer eat this stuff. Odd because I’m one of those people who have no issues with food and will try just about anything. I’m not aware of any allergies and I only remember a couple times that I had strange reactions when I was a kid. Nestle Strawberry Qwik was one of my favorites, and I’d drink it knowing that I’d break out in hives. It was worth it. Then, when my sister was Jewish, we were spending a lot of time at the neighborhood deli picking up taste treats like kishke and Halvah. My other sister and my mother watched, transfixed, as I consumed a bar of Halvah. It was the most wonderful thing I ever remember eating and I was enjoying it so much…until I noticed my mother and sister weren’t blinking. I was slowly swelling up like a whale. First my lips, then my face, then my entire head. My sister thought it was the coolest thing she’d ever seen.
I haven’t had Halvah since, but I’m so tempted to find out if I’m still allergic. Anyway, it was a long night what with the SWAT team in the ‘hood — and you can probably tell I didn’t get much sleep, so here’s to a more normal weekend.
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