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Where the HELL is my cake?

I love this anecdote from the Food Whore.

I do this all the time. Usually it's just smaller things, sunglasses, phone, maybe a pair of muddy running shoes after a race. Whatever.

But once I drove through the small town where I lived with a carboard box with a cake in it on the roof. I was driving a Volvo wagon so it didn't fall off (slow off the mark, you see) and people were staring and waving. Small town hospitality, I thought. I waved back with a big smile on my face as I drove down the main street. Aren't they all so friendly?

Then there was the time I went to the service station to vacuum my car at one of those giant vacuum stations with the big long stretchy hose.

I finished the job and replaced the hose. I drove out of the service station and home, about a kilometre. A couple of people standing by the bus stop waved. I'm just about thinking I must be famous with all the attention I get, just cruisin' down the street, and then I get home and do the big three-point U-turn and park outside my house.

Oh-oh.

There's the hose, caught in between the tow-ball and the fender, strung out thirty feet behind the red Volvo wagon like a giant reverse elephant's trunk or something. (They have a quick-release mechanism so that idiots like me don't drag the entire vacuum machine out of the ground when they get the hose caught up. That's why I didn't feel any jolt.)

It was even funnier driving back to the servo. The hose was too big to put in the car so I just drove right back there with it slithering along behind. The people at the bus stop waved again. God knows what they were thinking. I waved back with a big smile.

I drove into the servo, got out of the car, unhitched the stretchy hose from the tow-bar, dragged it to the vacuum machine and reconnected it. Beautiful.

The servo guy was looking out from behind the glass window in his little cashier's office. I swear his expression did not alter. Not a muscle in his face moved. He just ... stared.

I waved cheerily and drove off. Happy to brighten your day, I thought to myself.

I vacuum the car at home these days.

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