Getting the Lard Out

Remember what I said before about synchronicities?

Well, it turns out last week’s vacation featured more of them than even I was aware of.

In fact, I’m beginning to suspect that the Universe is stalking me.

Is that even possible?

I’m starting to wonder.

I don’t know if I mentioned that part of the reason we went to visit my boyfriend’s family is that a training conference he needed to attend to get a certification for his job was being held in the area. So while most of the vacation was vacation, two days of it were taken up by the class, and this left me somewhat on my own.

And what do you do to keep your slightly – uh – eccentric girlfriend off the streets while you’re at a conference?

Well, if you have any sense, you get your father to take her to the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, where she will be distracted by all the various anatomical oddities for a few hours.

And, being a sensible man, that is just what he did.

More on that (maybe way more than you want) in the next post.

So there we were, on the road to the museum, when I suddenly spotted a tanker truck in the neighboring lane. The back of the trailer read “Inedible Lard,” which struck me as funny, so I pulled out my iPhone and snapped a quick photo to send to my boyfriend.

I should mention that the two of us have a running joke about lard (who doesn’t?), and that his Facebook page features a photo of him holding a five-gallon bucket of lard at the supermarket.

Yes, really.

No, really.

Don’t ask.

So anyway, I sent him the picture, and he was briefly amused by the picture, and we both thought that was the end of it.

But then last night over dinner we started discussing inedible lard again (who wouldn’t?), and what the potential and mysterious uses for such a product might be.

Thus, after dinner, my ever-curious boyfriend looked it up online, as he is often wont to do. And within just a minute or two, he came up with the second of the two photos posted below (the first of which is my own).

Have a look.

If you dare.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong (which I’m definitely not), but not only are these photos nearly identical, they both feature THE SAME FREAKIN’ TRUCK.

Not just a similar truck that also happens to be carrying inedible lard, mind you, but precisely the selfsame identical truck. This second photo was taken eight months ago, so there’s a bit more wear and tear in mine, but if you look closely you’ll see that the license plates match up, as well as every detail, right down to the scratches on the bumper.

So what is to be made of this fat-related bit of Universal peculiarity? I have no idea, no more than I can fathom why I ran into a famous medium at a Jewish deli just a couple of days before.

And that wasn’t the end of the weirdness.

Oh no.

Just you wait until we get to the museum.