Flying Tacos

When I lived in Missouri, I used to drive back to Texas occasionally to visit my family. It was about a 16-hour drive, and there were several routes I could take. My favorite was down through Arkansas, because it had the prettiest scenery. The shortest was through Oklahoma, but it was also the most boring, because there was nothing to see. Someone recommended that I try heading over to Kansas before heading down, so on one visit, I tried that route. Big mistake! It was just as boring as the Oklahoma route, but also longer. But that’s not the point of this story.

During my trip, I got hungry and pulled over at a Taco Bell to get some portable lunch. (This, of course, was back when I could actually digest and process Taco Bell without turning into Mt. Vesuvius for the next three days.) So, as I drove on down the road, being lulled to sleep by grasslands and cows for as far as the eye could see, I grabbed one of my soft tacos and started unwrapping it. I liked to wrap the paper around the bottom like a diaper to catch any particulates that might fall out of the taco. I got my taco ready and looked up to see no road in front of me.

I was on a slightly raised portion of the highway, and the green fields were spread out below me. My car was pointed at one of these fields about to launch off the highway and go flying over the barbed wire fence. A disinterested black cow was standing on the other side of the fence, munching on some grass, watching my car barreling straight at her. As she realized that I was not swerving to follow the highway as it curves off to the left, she became much more interested. Her mouth stopped mid chew, and the wet, half-chewed grass dropped from her gaping mouth.

Realizing that I was about to die in Kansas of all places, and take this poor cow with me, I threw my soft taco across the car, grabbed the wheel, and jerked it to the left. My car responded, and I skidded along the gravel shoulder, my tires just kissing the grass along the edge. By the grace of God, I managed to get back onto the highway. I pulled over a mile up the road and collected the remnants of my taco from the floorboard and tried unsuccessfully to put it back together again.

I never went that route again. Mostly because I couldn’t bear to face that cow again. Her dark, judgmental eyes still haunt my dreams. I wonder now if I might have cleared that fence (and the cow) and landed safely on the other side. I’m not sure what I would have done at that point if I had. I guess I could have driven across the field to the farmhouse and tried somehow to explain what happened. Logically, it would make sense for someone not to believe such a far fetched story. But the fact that I was miraculously in their field would have been irrefutable proof. Well that, and the taco. We can’t forget the taco.