Once around the block

On the ride in this morning, my bus driver drove around the block for absolutely no reason.

For the first half of the trip, it looked like he was going to just drive back to the station with a full load of passengers, but after the third turn, it was apparent he was just going in a circle. My guess is that he’d just kind of zoned out earlier and found he couldn’t make a left turn because he was in the wrong lane, and he didn’t have any choice but to just go around and try again.

I can relate. I picked a bad time to zone out last night: while a waiter was grinding fresh pepper onto my food. He asked if I wanted some, I said sure, he started grinding away, and then my soul completely left my body. (I wasn’t contemplating any weighty matters; I was just thinking about ordering another beer.)

“Enough?” he asked.

“What? Oh, yeah. Sorry,” I said, snapping back to this plane of existence. “How long was he grinding pepper onto my food?” I asked my friend Elizabeth after he left.

“A long time!” she said.

I took a bite. She was right.