The Pickle Sucker

I don't normally nickname perfect strangers. I don't normally nickname many people with the glaring exception of bad dates and relationships. We've previously discussed The Snorter, Austin, possibly The Pooper, and many of you have heard my whine about the cheatin bastard lying piece of shit, the stupid drunk, and the psycho. This is one stranger though that is definitely worthy of a nickname. I should have picked something less obvious, you know, a tale of disturbia with a surprise ending, but we'll pretend this is a bad version of Memento and it's all in reverse.
My job takes me all over the north east. I get to meet a variety of interesting people. Interesting in this case covers bad, good, crazy, disturbing, bizarre, and quite creepy.
Being who I am of course, makes most people the wrong kind of interesting. That's how I ended up with this story.

I had just finished a call in New Jersey and was driving north on 287 as I do every week. Nothing out of the ordinary this week until I caught a work truck keeping pace with my car. If you've ever driven in NJ, especially northern Nj, you know that NO ONE keeps pace; they either ride your ass so hard it hurts, or fly by you like you're sitting still when you're moving 80 mph. Having this knowledge, I was relatively nervous about looking over to see why. After what happened in reality, I would have been happy with my initial fear that my car was on fire or falling apart around me because what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a creepy man with fewer than 8 rotting teeth grinning at me like he just had sex with a sheep after watching a Deliverance marathon. I nearly wrecked my car as the shock set in.

I sped up as I recovered to try to get away from him, but he did. Then I slowed and he slowed with me. He stayed with me long enough that I considered calling the police....but I was stuck on what I should say. “Hey Mister Officer, some creepy guy with rotting teeth is speeding down the highway beside me smiling” just didn't seem like a good reason to call 911.

I tried desperately to not look again, but much like a train wreck, I couldn't stop myself after so long. When I did, not only was I greeted with that thing he thought was a smile again, but he held in his hand something I didn't immediately recognize. For a brief moment I wondered if he was going to toss a grenade out the window. But no. It was nothing like that. It was just a giant pickle in a bag which he proceeded to suck for me. Yes. A creepy toothless man sucked on a giant pickle at me at 75 mph. Don't let anyone tell you that is not a life changing experience.

It is.

It was a week or so later that I decided I was hungry for a pickle. With such an incident so fresh in the mind, I felt repulsed and quite dirty for even considering eating one. Sadly, I still feel like that sometimes :(