Duel Two: Trucker Granny's Revenge

The old lady crept along the analgesics aisle with her shopping cart like the lead villain in a mummy movie.

And not one of those sleek, hyper-drive new CGI mummies, either. Oh no, we're talking Old School, plodding, 2-miles-an-hour, long-deceased, vengeful yet been-around-the-block-enough-they're-waiting-for-you-to-fall-and-break-an-ankle, pharaoh-type mummies here.

The ones who'll off you when they're good and ready.

I thought nothing of it at the time.

I assumed her, quite wrongly, to be just your average elderly lady. The kind with bladder control concerns. And gout. And arthritis from knitting her cats legwarmers.

And then I made the mistake that would cost me.

I had five minutes before I needed to be back at work. And I ducked around her.

Well...

Have you ever seen Spielberg's Duel with Dennis Weaver?

Dennis Weaver is a businessman driving on a desolate Western road. He needs to get to a meeting quickly. So he passes this slow-moving, large, mud-spattered gasoline truck-- just one simple action, something that happens a million times on the roads every day.

Unfortunately, the driver is two gears short of a well-wired gearbox.

And because of this single pass... this simple gesture... this one moment in time he cannot take back... that unseen driver begins a relentless mission to eliminate Dennis Weaver from America's roadways and make him go "splat."

I'm telling you all this because I suspect Duel was actually based on a real-life story, and that this old lady was actually the driver of that truck.

I don't know whether it was the speed with which I went around her. Or a snotty clack of my plastic shopping basket. Or an impertinent squeak of my shoes on the grocery store floor.

But this old lady let me get ahead of her in the aisle just enough for a false sense of security. And that's when she changed-- shedding her Sweet, Grandmotherly, Octogenarian Disguise and transforming into Trucker Granny from Hell.

Yes, I had no sooner headed on my way, and began to think about things back at the office, when the old woman put on an astounding, rattling burst of speed, plowed the shopping cart forward and...

Rammed it hard into the back of me, catching the ol' Achilles heel and the less firm parts of my nether-regions.

The cart clanked and jarred. I tripped forward, catching myself. Fellow shoppers witnessed, wide-eyed.

And I have to tell you, it was at that moment, there was a part of me that was really impressed-- though not necessarily my ankle tendon which was throbbing a bossanova of pain.

I mean, not often do you underestimate someone so thoroughly as to have your impression proven completely and utterly wrong-- and with physical assault, no less.

And when I turned to look at her and said a pointed, "Hey!" (a brilliant comeback considering the surprise circumstances), Granny had transformed once more. Only now she had become also blind and deaf.

She could not hear my indignant, "Hey."

She could not see me before her. She just smiled smugly, steadfastly refusing to meet my gaze.

The turbo which she had relied on only moments before had burnt out, but she was storing up... for later I think.

Yes, Trucker Granny had earned a notch on her shopping cart handlebar.

She had made a glorious shining statement against the pushy, uppity young'ns of the world. She had taken a stand for batty, damn-well-gonna-do-what-I-please seniors everywhere.

I imagine I wasn't her first victim.

And I'm willing to bet, I was not the last.

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Grocery Store Graceland and the Burger Barn Boobyhatch

Elvis enjoys a good bowl of soup. Sure, fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches get all the press, but there's something about a nice can of Campbell's that apparently gets the King all shook up.

I know this, because I saw him in the soup aisle of the Giant Eagle grocery store a few years ago. He was considerably taller than I'd expected-- a good six-foot-four and lanky-- but with the spangley big-collared white shirt, sunglasses, and side-burned coiffure we've all come to know and love...

Young Elvis with Old Fat Elvis accessories, really.

As I'd turned the corner to get a can of chicken noodle, I admit, I was surprised to see the American icon with his basket of ten items or less. And, considering this supermarket was typically patronized by college students and elderly Jewish ladies, the rest of the clientele appeared to share my sentiment.

I could pretty much tell just where Elvis was in the store by the 20-somethings walking past giggling into their hands. Or the blinking, glazed expressions on Gladys and Zelda as they returned from the deli.

Of course, when you live in a city, to a certain degree you come to expect these sort of things. I currently work across from a restaurant we'll call Burger Barn, which René Magritte and Salvadore Dali could have drawn on for choice material.

It's an old building-- what was once a 50s gas station, I've heard-- which was transformed into a restaurant and somewhere along the way it seems to have become trapped in its own unique plane of space, time, madness and kitsch.

Initially everyone who joins my company considers having a fast food joint right across the street as a bonus. They approach it with rosy spectacles, naively anticipating a burger-and-fry experience like those found in shops of the same name around the globe. Little do they know that this particular restaurant emits some kind of unspoken, yet strongly-magnetic pull for the strange and unusual.

They stop in once or twice and encounter someone kneeling on the floor and speaking in tongues...

Or someone with hundreds of silk scarves safety-pinned to their clothing, forming a robe of satin diamond-shapes....

Or they order from the cashier who smiles, only to reveal a full mouth of bright brown teeth...

It sort of changes your perspective on a BarnBurger Junior with Cheese.

And on Friday mornings? I can almost set my watch by the barking. It projects from the street below to my third floor office. I'd thought this was a part of a regular dog-walking ritual, but the receptionist recently shared that it is a man. A man who barks, and whines and whimpers, every Friday morning as he takes himself for a walk.

This is not to be confused with the man who pushes his small dog around in an old-timey baby carriage..

Or the guy who used to stand outside Burger Barn with a teddybear bungee-corded to his upper thigh, spitting out epithets or beautifully singing to no one, depending on mood. (Don't we all have those days?) Well, I realize I haven't seen him for a while-- and I find myself hoping he and Teddy are okay.

I think some days if I sat, watching the street below, the whole tapestry of humanity would eventually unroll itself before my eyes. For good or bad, it is what it is, and it's never dull.

Tomorrow afternoon, I'll be hearing Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," Patsy Cline, or maybe even "Kick Me, Lord Jesus, Through the Goal Posts of Life" blasting up beyond my window at about 3:00. It's a motorcyclist who comes on through, sharing his tunes with the world. It'll probably be followed by the person who randomly shouts "Woo-hoo!" and the guy who drives the A-team van.

Yep, the only thing we can really expect in life is the completely unexpected.

And in case you were wondering? Elvis prefers Chunky Vegetable.

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Tastebuds, Get Packin'

The tastebuds are gonna have to go.

You see, I'm trying to lose a little weight. And initially, I thought I could do this by getting up early to exercise-- you know, to do silly arm-waving movements in my basement for 45 minutes a day? I used to do this regularly.

But now I'm also at work by 7:30am. Which means "early" for me involves a time of the morning somewhere between:

1. The time when stupid villagers normally choose to try to go kill Dracula, and
2. The time when the villagers are all either dead on the floor of the crypt, or out-and-about looking a little pale and hungry... (Pretty much like I am when I diet.)

Well, the first week of exercise, I tried tricking myself into getting up super-early. I even set my alarm fifteen minutes ahead so I would not SEE that the clock actually read 4:45am. Because while 5:00am is bad enough, 4:45 is EVIL and WRONG and looking at the clock then will burn out your retinas. Retinas which I will need for reading caloric contents.

The problem with this routine was that I am also not very smart in the morning.

Okay, "not very smart" is an understatement-- I am an amnesiac with an IQ well-below that of the average unschooled hamster in the morning.

I don't know my own name until about 6:00am, and even in getting up and grabbing coffee, I have been known to do things like put the creamer away in the dish cabinet. This makes doing more complex tasks like getting into exercise clothing, while uncaffeinated, virtually impossible.

Sports bras do not serve their greater purpose as scarves, is all I'm sayin'.

So, this has led me to try to eat healthier. Which I have been doing. I've replaced my favorite lunchtime broccoli cheese soup with a bowl of Cheerios and a banana. I've consumed tiny carrots. I've bought soy ice cream as a treat.

And I've grown to hate, just a little bit, one of my friends who is stick-skinny and gets all excited when there are peas on the salad bar. I will eat the salad, yes, I will. But darned if I'm gonna go into end-zone dances over PEAS.

So I think it would go more smoothly if my taste buds were removed. My taste buds and, perhaps, the part of my brain which remembers vividly things like what a hot roast beef sandwich with French fries and gravy tastes like. Because currently I'm going through the grocery store like this:

Me: Must buy more Cheerios and 2% milk.

Brain: OOH! Look! Barbecue potato chips! We love those!

Me: No! NO barbecue potato chips! Cheerios. And 2% milk.

Brain: Oh, that's right-- We're dieting. We're being smart and good and using our willpower and-- HEY! Macaroni and cheese in cute little containers! Do you remember how much we used to love macaroni and cheese-- you know, before we were dieting?

Me: NO. NO macaroni and cheese! Cheerios and--

Brain: Oh, I can still almost taste it-- that cheese all gooey... Maybe baked with some breadcrumbs and sharp shredded cheddar on the top?

Me: (growling) Cheerios. And 2% milk. And bananas.

Brain: WOW, bananas! We like bananas!

Me: Yes, we do. So let's go get some bananas.

Brain: Cool!...

....

...

...Hey, you know what goes good with bananas? Chocolate! Chocolate is GREAT on frozen bananas. Remember when we used to have those as a kid? Didn't we just love that?

So this is what I'm up against. If the buds were gone, and if I just couldn't remember what I was missing, I think I could really make this lifestyle shift work. Without taste buds, peas might have a fun texture I could get jazzed about. And without the food-memory part of the brain, cheese and chocolate would never become an issue. The Brain could think: "Hey, Cheerios and milk" and we'd leave it at that.

So-- here's the thing: do you think tastebudectomies are available sort of like LASIK surgery? Because, you know, I think there's a market for that.

Tastefully,
--Jenn


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