Tap for the Cap

Sometimes the most mundane of daily activities can produce the most surreal situations.

So I hop into the car after leaving work to head home and I realize that I need gas. Only a slight inconvience, I took it in stride and re-routed my course home to pass the nearest Shell Station. Traffic's light and I make it to the gas station with plenty of time and gas to spare. Once the tank has been topped off, I reclaim my rightful seat behind the wheel, start the engine, put the car in gear and take off with a whoosh of acceleration.

As I'm waiting for traffic to clear allowing me to make a right and continue on my way, I hear a clunk come from the back of the truck just before I pull into traffic. The sound wasn't one of some part breaking and the truck was running fine. It was more of the sound of something hitting the exterior of the truck. If I hadn't been in my normal state of preoccupation, I might have stopped and checked the truck out before entering the road. As it was, I was a half a block way before my brain had finally registered the sound and decided it might be a good idea to check it out. I followed the protical handed down to me by the man upstairs and checked the side view mirror in an attempt to locate the source of the sound. As luck would have it I didn't find the source of the sound in my mirror and instead saw that I had forgotten to put the gas cap back on.

That's when it all hit me. The man walking out of the gas station as I pulled away had seen the unattached cap and had tapped the back of my truck in an attempt to bring it to my attention and possibly to get me to stop and take care of it. The brain was back on the job and deducing like nothing had ever happend. Grateful, I pulled into the next the parking lot I came across, which was a block from the gas station, and put the cap in is proper place. As I'm twisting the final revolution to drive the cap home, a man drives up to my truck, rolling down the window as he slows to a stop. I recongize him as the man who was walking across the gas station parking lot as I left.

"I've lost three or four of those things," he begins in good but heavily accented english. He's a man of middle eastern decent driving a beat up toyota corrolla.

"Yeah, thanks for letting me know about that," I responded in a truthful tone. It really was a nice thing that he did. Satisfied the cap is properly secured, I walk around the back of the truck towards the driver's side door.

"Let me know if you ever want to sell that," he says as I pass his car.

I stopped and stared back at him blankly. Sell what? The gas tank cap? My shirt? My body? What the hell was this guy getting at? I don't normally get propositioned, for anything, in the parking lot of a taco bell. I couldn't figure it out and the grin on his face was only making me feel more uncomfortable. I guess he could read the confusion on my face because he repeated himself.

"Let me know if you want to sell it," he said, this time gesturing towards my truck with his hand. "I'm right down the street past the McDonalds."

"Oh, ok," the anxiety must have drained from my face like a plunged toilet. "I'll make sure I do that." I gave him the thumbs up, my only defense against confusing foreign people, as he turned his chariot around and drove away.

I stood for a minute in the empty parking lot, unable to do anything but shake my head. What made him think that I wanted to sell my car? How was I supposed to know what he was talking about. Either I need to become more intuitive, or someone's got some 'splaining to do.