I had an amazing day the other day. While it wasn’t
psychedelic, it was as if space and time were distorted and reality had taken
the day off, so I’ll cover it here.
I hadn’t had much sleep, but Angelique, the member of my
pack I was about to spend the day with, had been getting less. She had sent me
a text message to see if I was ready, to which I responded that I was “killing
shit”, i.e. getting everything ready in quick order. She responded, “Get me a buffalo.”
We go to get something to eat for breakfast in Covington, early, not realizing everything
but Waffle House is closed. We jump across the bridge to Newport, because we
know the Pepper Pod is always open and have good breakfast. We eat, chill,
talk, and the View Master is brought up in a weird context I will not cover here.
At first, we couldn’t remember what it was called, but our waitress helped us
on that. We decided to go shopping.
If Angelique were writing this, she’d probably spend more
time talking about the shoes she found at the Savings Place, and how her Chuck Taylors
were the same as Amy Pond from Dr. Who, but she’s not, so I won’t. We went into
a pawn shop, which had nothing but jewelry we weren’t even interested in, but a
side door led us into a more eclectic area that had a huge amount of Elvis
memorabilia, vinyl records, and an assortment of other odd things. Rather than peruse
the music and take six hours, we instead looked at the shelves against the
wall, where we found a vintage, 1940-50’s View Master, with the box. We
purchased it, but it didn’t have any slides. We were blown away that they had
one, and while it may not be an uncommon thing in a pawn shop, I had never seen
one around here.
The next leg of our shopping covered many stops, but the St.
Vincent DePaul stood out the most, at first. We looked around the entire store,
before asking if they had a View Master, particularly slides, since that was
what we were really seeking. Less than a week prior, they had received one, so
the leady went to check for it. She told us they had been playing with it and looking
at the slides, so she knew they had one in, but believed they had sold it. We
continued our search down the street at a consignment shop. Instantly in the
door, we asked if they had a View Master, and the lady began searching, pretty
sure they did. After about five minutes, she found a plastic case, with two red
View Masters, a stack of slides, and a sticker with a value more than the money
we had on us, but she was willing to accept what we had.
We decided it was due time to go drinking, but first we
wanted to show our waitress that we had found exactly what we discussed
earlier. She probably thought we were kooks, but we were impressed with
ourselves. Angelique told her we were going to play the lottery, so she gave us
three numbers, 210, which we played. While having beers at a bar, we looked
through our acquisitions, and on one of the slides, we had buffalo. On a fake
lottery ticket, we contracted AIDS (long story on why that’s awesome.) There
were more coincidences, but I’ve rambled for far too long.
The entire experience was rather surreal, but eventually we
had to go our separate ways. Whatever magic we had when together, eventually
faded, because when I checked the lottery numbers, we had two of them, just not
the third. So close. So damn close.
This day ruled.