Saturday, June 30, 2012

Making Waves

A few weeks ago some of the guys at work piled into the young Captain's Dodge truck to grab some lunch.  It was pouring rain out, but we weren't going to let that keep us from getting some Chinese food in our bellies.  We enjoyed a decent meal and conversation, then got back into the Ram for the trek back to work.  It was raining so heavily that there was severe flooding on the roads, and like the big kid he is, Mike decided it would be fun to drive through the water at high speed, driving close to the cub for maximum throwing effect.

We all enjoyed the feel of the heavy truck plowing through the waterlogged streets like some kind of hybrid aqua-machine, and got some good laughs from the height and distance the water was carrying as it sprayed out along the side of the road.  Then as we came up to an intersection there sat a lady in a Buick with a cigarette hanging from her mouth and her window, presumably to let the smoke out of the car, rolled halfway down.

Seeing the lady, Mike pointed at her, and shouted through his windshield (as if she could hear him) "roll your window up, lady!" and kept driving.  I initially thought he was going to slow down, but he simply let off the gas a bit as he shouted for her to save herself, and we all watched as a tsunami rose from the Dodge's sides. The last thing we saw was the wave cascading down towards her open window.  Had we been decent people we would have all sat silently aghast, but of course the car broke out in laughter at the combination of the lady's bad luck and Mike's inability to process the information fast enough to slow down and save her from the deluge.

I don't know if she saw it coming and quickly rolled up her window, but I'll never be able to erase from my mind the image of that wall of water rising up and blocking her visage from sight as we passed by, with Mike pointing at her and shouting helplessly.  I guess he at least gave her an incentive to stop smoking.