Day 44

August 13, 2010, Day 44-Learned many things today, that Ho-Chunks have Mexican stand-offs over parking spaces—as does the rest of the United States. I’m German and I did. My friend is Swedish and she was there. Here we were, in the parking lot of what is called Wally World in Wisconsin Dells—Wal-Mart. The skies had opened and the gods were obviously draining their pool (or at least I hope it was a pool), and we had just spent a minute or two waiting for an elderly man to pull out of a space. He was parked in a space going the wrong way—a totally EASY spot to pull right into if you are going the other way in the other row—you’ve seen those spots. He pulls out, we pull in and we are ¾ of the way into the space and in turns a pickup. We both stopped and stared at each other through the sheet of water running down both windshields, and there we sat. No one rolled down the windows and yelled. No one performed vulgar sign language. We just looked at each other. Of course, I was saying to my friend to continue to pull into the space, which of course, she didn’t do. We just sat as others around us ran between the downpours, raced shopping carts and made happy dry purchases inside. Finally, he backed out and took another spot while we pulled in and waited for the clouds to part just a bit. He walked by, asked us if, “What the fuck, don’t you know how to drive?” and kept walking. We eventually made it to the interior of Wal-Mart where my friend said she saw him, where I said I was looking for him, and neither met ever again. Probably a good thing.

There are other things I learned today about preparation of dead bodies, but I think I’ll save that for a piece of writing. That definitely deserves its own spot.