This Weeks Very Short Story: Chapter 21

Before Cup Holders: My mother had a 1960’s Dodge Lancer. I loved that car and dreamed that one day I would get to drive it. All it took was my mother driving with her cigarette in one hand and a coffee cup in another. We were stopped at a light and I think she was drinking the coffee and dropped an ash on her lap and then went to brush it off. Well, she popped the clutch, and we were jolted into the back of a large truck. The front of the car was ruined, it was the end of the dream. 

I like cilantro. My mother said it tasted like soap. Maybe I like it because of all the times my mouth was washed out with, that would have been Dial though. 

One night we decided to go out to see a movie and then dinner. We got to the movie. It was one of those new theatres with a good sound system. Immediately when the movie started I felt like I was part of the movie. It was a war movie. It was almost like I could feel the bullets flying by me, not just from the sound but I swear you could feel the breeze as they passed. I would look over to see if my wife was hit. By the time the move ended, we felt like we had been through the war. We had to walk around for awhile before we could even think of going out to dinner. The movie was Saving Private Ryan. 

It’s hard to believe that this Jewish boy was listening to Jethro Tull’s Agualung and the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar in 1971. A few of us even knew all the words to the songs, I can’t say that now. I guess that we needed balance in life in those days. 

In October of 2016, I was on the way to Michigan State for a college fraternity reunion I stopped and had breakfast at McDonalds. After eating I had to make a U-turn, a Michigan left. Upon turning I noticed a food truck, Gourmet Grill Cheese truck. I had seen this truck on facebook posted by someone I went to Hebrew school and attended the same high school with. So I pulled over into a gas station and asked if the person driving had the same last name of the person I knew. He did. We talked awhile; he was on his way to Cedar Pointe to work. I told him to say hello to his father. As I love grilled cheese, I only wish he was set up to work. Maybe next time I visit from California, I will run into him again.