Subject: Thievery
Message:
Hi [name removed]!
[Name removed] tells me that I should let you know of some shenanigans that went down. I had 2 microwave meals in the freezer last week. They were there Friday before I went home sick. Today, they seemed to have vanished. I am understandably annoyed. As in, I can't promise I won't pelt frozen apple blossoms* at the offender. In fact, I'm drafting plans for a trebuchet right now.
I've attached an image to further detail my feelings.
Thank you.

Attached image:

*A pastry-type food, often stored in the breakroom freezer.

The other day I experienced an event that dug up one of my most vivid memories of childhood. It wasn't an extremely happy memory, nor was it one of immense sadness. It was one of my early life lessons encompassing the following: there are plenty of letdowns in life, and most likely a few bastards at the root of those letdowns.
The setting was a Long John Silver's, close to Manmouth Caves, I believe. Eating out as a kid always seemed like an event. For starters, it didn't seem to happen a whole hell of a lot. Sure, there was the occasional milkshake, but most of my experience in a drive-thru as a child involved me in the backseat with my siblings while my parents ordered a cup of coffee, wondering why the hell we never got anything. When we did eat out, it was always at the actual restaurant, a custom that I have a difficult time subjecting myself to these days. (It's a germ thing.) And forget about whatever we wanted off the menu, it was whatever was cheapest, on sale, or what my parents had a coupon for. For the longest time, I thought Arby's Beef n' Cheddars were the absolute top of the line in fast food cause we were only allowed to get them when they were on sale.
So back to Long John Silver's. There I was, probably around 5 or 6 yrs old, waiting to get my kid's meal. I remember the lady at the counter telling me there were going to be "all kinds of good stuff" in my kid's meal. I couldn't wait. After we left the restaurant, meals in tow, there was a moment either in the car or back at the hotel where I opened the kid's meal box to discover what kinds of awesomeness would be instead.

The box was empty.

Not a cheap toy. Not a goddamn hushpuppie.

Completely empty. Devoid of "good stuff".

I was crushed. Someone could have told me right there and then that Santa Claus was made up too, and I would have just thought "That sounds about right." It wouldn't have been as bad if the kid's meal wasn't so built up beforehand. But this made it seem deliberate in my eyes, like I was intentionally set up to be disappointed. It was literally years before I could go to another Long John Silver's. (I'm not kidding, I hold grudges.)

Flash forward to last week. I'm at my eye doc's, getting some new glasses. The tech asked me if I wanted the transitional lenses this time. I decided, sure, why not? Then the tech says "They've really improved the transition lenses. They are so much better than before. You're going to love them."

In retrospect, that should have been my first sign.

I picked up the new glasses today and put them on once I got back to work. Upon leaving for the day, I stepped outside into the bright sun. And waited. And waited. And realized, it was pretty freaking bright still. I took off the glasses and looked at the lenses. The supposedly awesome and ridiculously expensive transition lenses failed to actually transition. This crashed my poor code monkey mind as I realized this wasn't something I could de-bug. And then it dawned on me that I had once again been set up to expect awesome only to get a steaming pile of nothing. The only difference is, I actually like my eye doc so I won't be holding a grudge this time around. My doc's office staff will be greeted in the morning with a lovely rambling message and will hopefully call me to straighten this out. I think I may demand some hushpuppies too, just for therapeutic reasons.

Well, don't we all?

It was a dark and stormy night -- scratch that.. It was rainy, kinda gray, and in the middle of rush hour traffic. As I sat through "stop and go and stop some more" traffic, something caught my eye. To my right was a Ford Explorer with a very distinctive personalized licensed plate. When I see a personalized plate, there's usually a few things that come to mind. For example, "Yeah, dream on buddy", "WTF is that supposed to mean?", "They can have THAT, but I was denied Monkee?", and the rare "So that's the person out of all the people in the state that scored that one...nice."
What happened this particular evening was more in the vein of the last two. You see, the license plate simply read "GOD".
I was speechless for a few seconds, then gave it a second look. Yup, that was "GOD". I'm not sure how someone was allowed to nab God, but good for them. That's when the jokes began to pop in my head.

"Oh. OH. So God drives a gas-guzzling SUV, hmm? "Always pictured him as more of a hybrid type-deity."

And then, "If that's God, who would HIS co-pilot be?"
That's when it happened.
The car in front of me was turning right onto a street, when his car just stopped moving. That meant that I had to make my car stop moving right away. My foot stomped on the gas, kicking in the ABS. But my car wasn't stopping, but rather skidding. A hybrid of words and yelps can out of my mouth as I tried to wrangle my car back into control. It finally stopped, but I couldn't tell if I had hit the other vehicle or not. As I pulled off the road behind the other driver, I realized that all of this happened right in front of a police officer. I was cursing my luck under my breath as I hopped out to check with the other driver. To my absolute shock, both cars were unscathed. Apparently my vehicle had merely grazed off the side of his car, leaving no damage. This was a warning shot, no doubt.
As we hopped back into our respective cars and drove away, me passing the officer who was still waiting to turn at the light, I had one fleeting thought:

"Okay, maybe it was wrong, but you still have to admit it was funny."