Freaky Loud Surprises

It's Saturday night as I write this, and I'm feeling a little edgy. Things that go "BANG!" loudly and suddenly have afflicted me several times within the past 24 hours, and each incident is scarier than the last.

Last night I was having dinner with a friend at Swiss Chalet when the first big BANG happened. The whole restaurant hushed for a moment. I had my back to the room, so I couldn't see what had happened. I froze in my chair, trying to identify the sound. Then my friend said "It was just a balloon", and as the words left her lips, the normal hubbub of conversation rose up around us again. It took me a moment to refocus my brain, but then I thought nothing more of it.

Everything went normally for the first part of Saturday. Ken and I tried a new place for lunch: The Centre Street Deli. It's very popular. Check out the lineup. Everyone standing up is waiting for a table, from where I am with my camera to that guy way at the front in the yellow windbreaker.



While we waited I took some photos. They have very odd murals.



The wait wasn't as bad as it could have been. In only slightly more than ten minutes, we had our table. And shortly after that, our feast was served. If last weekend's meal was 8,000 calories, this one must have been around 8,157.



Note the rainbow of meat in my sandwich. On the menu it's called the "Club Roll", and contains a sampling of all of their deli meats, for those who can't choose just one.

The big blobby things are knishes. One beef, one chicken. With gravy. Could we be any more decadent? Look at the size of those things! For the record, I only ate half of what was on my plate and took the rest home.

We were feeling happy, full, and serene on the drive back. But then, just a few blocks from home, a storm struck. The wind picked up and the rain sheeted down, so hard that at points we could barely see. Then as we turned onto a side street, a hefty tree branch suddenly slammed down on the windshield, right in my face. BANG! I nearly jumped out of my seat, and Ken was like "Woah!" then "I think that might have dented the car!"

We got safely into our underground parking lot. Ken inspected the car. No visible damage. We're lucky. It could have been a bigger branch.

We hung out at home for an hour or so, and then headed back out to meet my step-dad for dinner. We went to a very civilized restaurant in the Forest Hill Village. I ordered a big salad to make up for my lunch. We were having a nice chat, relaxing, when suddenly, right behind me, BANG! I thought someone must have kicked over a chair. But immediately Ken motioned with his hands and yelled at me: "Get down!"

Without thinking, I scooted off my seat and ended up on my butt on the floor. There was another BANG! directly behind me, and then everyone seemed to relax.

When I recovered from Fight Or Flight mode enough to use my higher brain functions, I realized that a large painting had fallen off the wall behind me in two stages. The first BANG was when the nail pulled out of the drywall, and the painting dropped several inches vertically, onto the table directly beneath it, where, fortunately, no one was seated. It then started, slowly at first, to tip away from the wall. Ken saw it falling, directly towards my head, and yelled for me to get out of the way. I reacted quickly enough that I was out of my seat by the time the top of the painting slammed down. Another narrow escape.

Now, my nerves are shot. Ken chose not to drive on the highway on our way home, just in case the Sequence of Escalating Things That Go Bang had any further ideas for our car. You could say that these things come in three's, and that I can now consider myself safe. Either that or I'm doomed further, worse BANG! problems in the immediate future. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the Three Theory, shall we?