Through the Eyes of a Delivery Goddess |
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I am disappointed with myself for not being able to remember this fellow pizza driver's name, so I'm going to call him Budda, because he always looked like those statues of Budda you see around here and there. He was kind of chubbie, shaved head, but always full of life and laughter. He worked at a tattoo shop during the day and his nights off from the pizza shop, so he was one big canvas of body art garnished with a few piercings here and there. Budda drove a red sub-compact car that was about 12 years old at the time - it was faded, scratched and wrinkled around the edges, but got fairly good gas mileage. It was a great delivery car. One evening, Budda came back from a delivery, obviously a bit shaken. He beckoned us to gather around his car outside, which was sporting a new, huge dent dead-center of the hood. After he explained, you could actually see the two hoof marks where he said a deer had jumped down off of a hill side, spring-boarded off of the center of his hood, and kept on running without even as much as a flinch. He stopped the car and sat there for what seemed like ten minutes - probably more like thirty seconds - trying to digest what had just happened. He got out of his car, and gazed at the hood while the quivers inside calmed to the point he felt comfortable driving back to the shop. He asked the manager if he could skip the next round of deliveries, and again join in when his turn came around the next time. Of course, the manager agreed. He returned from the next delivery intact, but when he returned from the following delivery, the windshield was all smashed in. Someone at the cash register noticed as he pulled in and announced it to everyone else, and we all went running out to his car. We helped him out, he was in tears. He spoke slowly, his voice shaking, "You guys won't believe this! [he explained the road on which the incident occured; most of us knew the exact location] From the bank on the upper side of the road, a TURKEY soared across the road in front of me, toward the woods on the lower side. He bounced off of my windshield on the way across the road. I don't think I hurt him very much, he barely lost altitude after the impact. I just can't believe this... I just can't believe it." The manager put his hand on Budda's shoulder and said, "Why don't you cash out for the night?" Budda went home with a free extra large pizza, a free two-liter of Mt Dew and the sympathies of every other delivery driver on duty that night. He announced as he walked out the door, "How come no one informed me it was GAME NIGHT?" We all had a good laugh. It took him about a week to get another car and return to driving, but he didn't last long after his return. |