More often than not, I leave my office around 5:45 to drive home after a long 5 or 6 hour day at the office. Wednesday, August 1, 2007 was one of those typical days.Quickly, I closed my laptop, threw it in the same backpack that has a bottle of five hundred 200mg ibuprofin tablets, a bottle of Gold Bond, and several packages of sport beans. I then sped up the stairs and into my car. With the radio tuned to 1130 on the AM dial, I hit the road, completely oblivious to the tragedy about to take place.
A few minutes into my ride, I cruised by what at first appeared to be some litter on the side of the road. At the very last second, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed it was a hat. A trucker hat. A BROWN trucker hat. A brown trucker hat with a logo suspiciously similar to that of Ding Wop. I u-turned and then pulled over to inspect it further only to discover that it was INDEED a limited edition Ding Wop trucker hat.
I have included photographic evidence of said hat on the side of the road lying in the middle of a T intersection, exactly where I first spotted it.
I spent a few minutes parking, walking over to it, photographing it, wondering who would leave his Dinger hat on the side of the road. I determined the schmuck was probably from Liquid Assjets.
I then hopped back into my car, still bewildered over the orphaned hat. A few minutes later, someone called in to KFAN to report that a bridge had fallen. It didn't seem like a big deal. It seemed like it might have been a prank of some sort, at least until the producers of the show confirmed that a bridge had in fact collapsed and that the bridge was the freeway where 35W crossed the Mississippi. Or, for those who don't carpool with me on a daily basis, my usual route home. THE bridge that I cross 2 or more times almost every day. Holy . . . shit.
Now in shock of the magnitude of the event, the Dinger hat completely left my mind. Later, though still in shock, it occurred to me that on a normal day, if not for the extraordinary discovery compelling me to pull over, I might have been part of some extraordinary circumstances of an entirely different kind.
In short, Ding Wop saved my life.
