I’ve decided to finally give you that funny post I’ve been promising, this one in honor of it being the Sunday of GenCon (where l am not, again – – seven years is a long time, darn it! Dang kids!)
GenCon was really a big thing for my friends back in the day when we were all young and free. Generally there were like 20+ of us that would go every year. A few people would fly, but mostly we were too poor for that. People would either fill up their car with people, or rent a minivan and stick 6-7 friends in it who could split the cost. It was in one such minivan on one GenCon Sunday that our story takes place.
That year our minivan crew was our married friends, let’s just call them Alfredo and Challah (unless they read this and tell me I can use their real names… or they stop being my friend if I don’t get rid of those stunningly racist pseudonyms); and our married blind friends Nick and Alexis (those are also terribly inappropriate, but the references are far more esoteric, so maybe no one will notice). We’d been on the road out of Indy for about three hours and needed to stop for gas and bathrooms and all that. So we pull over in the middle of Nowheresville, Ohio.
Alfredo goes in first so he can use the bathroom and come back out to pump gas, since it was his turn to pay, and Challah walks into the convenience store with Nick and Alexis. My husband and I stay with the van until Alfredo comes back and then head in ourselves. By the time we’re done in the bathroom everyone else is back at the van. My husband goes to grab a snack while I stand in front of the cooler trying to decide what I want to drink. A very rurally-oriented looking guy comes up next to me, grabs beer out of the fridge, then pauses after closing the door before he turns to me, and with a significant twang says,
“I realla ‘preciate whatch yar doin’.”
I look behind me to confirm he’s not talking to someone else before I respond. “Um, what am I doing?”
“Oh no, nothin’ bad, ma’am. I just wanded ta tell ya how much I ‘preciate what it is yar doin’.”
Baffled, I reply, “I’m buying a drink.” Now he looks annoyed. “I’m sorry, I just don’t understand what you mean.”
He no longer looks like he appreciates me. “Ya don’t have ta be like that. I was just tryin’ to pay ya a compliment.” He walks away, buys his beer and leaves in a bit of a huff.
Bewildered, I get my drink and meet my husband at the register. He askes me what that was all about, and I say I have no idea. The lady behind the register sweetly says, “Oh he was just tryin’ to tell ya that what ya folks are doing is really kind.”
“But I have no idea what we’re doing!!!”
“It’s nice of ya’ll helping them blind ones get out. Are they your kinfolk?”
Utterly taken off guard and unable to even fathom how to respond to that first sentence, I stuck with the second. “No, they’re our friends.”
“Well that makes ya even nicer.”
…… and I give you rural Ohio.
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My husband and I walk back to the van in awe of what just went down, to find Alfredo and Nick doubled over laughing and Challah and Alexis pretty darn amused as well.
“Wow, I thought we were the only ones having weirdness go down at this place, what happened here?!?!”
Once they could breathe again, they relayed this tale:
As gas was finishing pumping, a motorcycle with two people on it had pulled up on the other side of the pump.
Motorcycle engines still running, “Alright, time to get out,” Alfredo said to Nick who’d been sitting in the driver’s seat while they chatted.
Motorcycle engine cuts off and the the riders take off their helmets just in time to see Nick unfurl his cane and climb out of the driver’s seat.
The look on their faces was apparently BEYOND PRICELESS.
…………………………………………………………
Man, I would have paid to be there. I remember a story of Nick tapping his cane from the drivers seat of a car.