This STF retells the story of my 2nd trip to the Palisade’s mall. This was not a very recent event, so it’s not as fresh as a daisy in my mind. However, the freshest (fresh in the true sense of the word) daisies are the stickers hippies put on their cars in the sixties, and since that’s pretty old, I can write about this now even after it’s had a chance to recede into the wrinkles of my brain.
The mall. It was one of those "Let’s do something, if you drive," types of things, and Matt agreed to lead us (or drive us) in the great trek across the scary Tappan Zee Bridge if we got him an EZ Pass. So we did. And it was good.
Matt wasn’t sure how to get there, so we quickly listened to two lines of directions as we ran out the door to pick up our cohorts. We went to Craig’s house. While Craig was putting on his shoes, his mother came out to the car.
"Quick!" Matt said in a panic, "She’s gonna ask me if I know how to get there, what were the directions?!?"
"Okay," and I went into ultrasonic speech speed, "Go over the Tappan Zee Bridge, exit 12, stay to the left and go into the parking lot." I finished the speech with two seconds left for him to digest the directions before Craig’s mom got to the window of the car. She smiled at us.
"Need directions?" she asked nicely.
"No," Matt responded innocently.
And we were off.
So now we’re on the bridge. And we hit traffic, bad. We were modestly annoyed, but figured that life without traffic on a bridge is abnormal, even with an EZ Pass.
We noticed things were abnormal when the cars came to a full stop. Our optimism was less encouraged when Matt was actually able to put his car in park and turn off the engine. Well, we had time on our hands. The news radio said that a car had flipped over and blocked the bridge. Just our luck.
We had to stretch out legs. Well, the cars weren’t going anywhere, so it was not a bad thing that we got out and started walking around, was it? Well, we did it anyway. All up and down the bridge, people were stopped, outside their cars, and anxiously awaiting news. We traded bits of information with the people we met as we made our way down the bridge. We actually got the sight of the accident, ½ the bridge’s length away.
What was that noise? Car engines starting. Uh-oh.
We had to run, and I mean RUN back to Matt’s car, ½ the bridge’s length away. That was tough. All along the run, cars were starting to our left and right. It was like "Running down a narrow street and seeing motion detectors go on," (Thanks Beech).
We all got back safely. And Beech and Craig got a hubcap.
And we went to the mall.
The Past Stranger Than Fictions
Why Not? I'm nice, really!
© 1997
