Eat Up Small Cars

 

Driving to Yorktown Heights.  I spoke with my hand up to my ear as we drove down the highway.  I didn’t want to subject my wife and my daughter to my regularly scheduled phone call.  Twice we came upon cops, on the side of the road and I lowered the phone and let the other person chat away, as I didn’t want to be seen to be multitasking behind the wheel.  Fortunately, the call was over by the time we turned on to the Taconic Parkway which is always rather tight.

 

At the exit, not long after the tragically named “Donald J. Trump” park, we pulled into a mall with a big Lowes and a smaller Starbucks, but no AAA office.  We needed 'Triple A' to get an international drivers license.   Waze had led me “here’ and I called AAA on the phone, and they confirmed. That this was the right address. In the front, by the Starbucks was the actual entrance. 

 

The rather professional young lady there, upsold me into getting paid annual memberships which would allow the international drivers license, to use for free. This lady, whom I was enjoying working with, pulled in another young guy, who was a bit more goofy, as young Westchestarians go, asking if Shandong, the home county on my wife’s application was near Guangzhou?  He kept writing information in incorrectly with horrendous handwriting and then typing it wrong in the computer as well.  The ten-minute exercise was gradually eating up thirty mins and I went next door to grab a triple espresso. 

 

Down in Maplewood NJ, where we went next I was so happy to see my nephew.  What a lovely guy.  We both kept repeating: “it’s been way too long!.”  He wanted to show me his Matchbox Car Set.  The “Ultimate Parking Garage” had a Tyrannosaurs Rex that could not only eat up small cars, but also shit them out.  He had Legos and Four Across.  I wanted to show him if not play for him, the copy of “Help!” I’d sent him the last time we’d met.  And after a nice lunch of deli sandwiches, we got serious about looking over the one-hundred-and-forty-thousand mile Subaru we’d come down to take off them.      

I drove slowly on the way home and it seemed to hold up pretty well, though there was no air con and so we had to keep the windows down.  I managed to recall and play “Male Model” by the Undertones, which had me laughing as we proceeded along the Garden State Parkway.       

 

 

 

Tuesday, 08/03/21