Another classic tale of my days as a delivery driver for a printing company… and the kind of stuff that only seems to happen to me… and seems to happen quite often…

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Have you ever looked at a map and wondered how it got folded in the first place? You know they must have a machine that does that, but I bet you do not know what that machine looks like.

Well I do, because I worked at a lithograph/printing company, and between deliveries I worked in the shop. There was a lot of collating and compiling and shrink-wrapping and packing and stacking and other such technical work to do.

One day we got an order to print up… (I think it was 50,000, but I am not good with numbers)… little information handouts for the Balboa Park information office. Balboa Park is where the world-famous San Diego Zoo is located. (You have to say ‘world famous’ San Diego Zoo, or they get mad at you.It is just a thing that San Diegans do, like calling every rainy day the storm of the century. I am still trying to get used to living here).

These little brochures started as narrow strips, but we put them through the folding machine which gave each brochure two folds, reducing them to playing card size. As they came out of the folding machine, me and another guy would grab them every time the counter got to 100. Then we would stick them in the box. The box got packed pretty tight, but we managed to cram the rest of the pamphlets in there. Then the box went into the van with some other things I had to deliver in a Southerly direction.

I made the other deliveries. There was only that one box left. Did I mention that the van had no air conditioning? San Diego gets warm. In the summer I always had the windows down.

I became aware of a strange noise. Sort of a whuff-whuff-whuff sound. Like a giant clothes-dryer. Something brushed against my ear. I glanced around. It looked like the inside of one of those little snow globes back there. Like 50,000 tiny seagulls were flying around in the back of the van.

We had stuffed too many brochures into the box, just because we didn’t want to start a new box that wouldn’t be full. The pressure from inside split one corner seam of the box. The wind did the rest, circulating around the van, plucking the brochures one by one from their safe, warm nest and ejecting them into the spiraling air currents like miniature fledgling eagles taking their first soaring flight.

The thing is… (you know there is always going to be a thing)… I knew it was funny. But there was a not-quite-so-funny side as well. I was almost to Balboa Park. I had no tape in the van with which to fix the box. And anybody who has ever played 52 card pickup with playing cards knows how long it takes to pick up 52 cards and line them all up facing the proper way. Now picture that game with 50,000 cards scattered all over in a hot van, and all of them with now unfolded folds. It would have taken me three days to pick them all up.

So I had to slink back to the shop. Three guys had to help me pick them all up and repack them into… (you guessed it)… two boxes. They gave me dirty looks for the whole two or so hours that it took us to finish.

I stuck a roll of box tape in the glove compartment just in case, but that never happened to me again.

As a last amusing end to the story, when I got to the information office at Balboa Park, and I was waiting for the man to look over our work before signing for it, I noticed a dad with his little three or four-year old girl. She was looking at the animal posters on the walls, advertisements for the San Dieg… sorry, the world-famous San Diego Zoo. “Ooh, ediphant, daddy,” she would say, pointing at the elephant. Her father happily agreed. “Ooh, monkey, daddy,” she said, pointing at a chimpanzee. Once again he proudly agreed with his daughter’s observational brilliance. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, the adorable and oh-so-clever child swung her finger to point at me. “Hippy, daddy,” she proclaimed, no doubt in reference to my rather long hair. Daddy looked decidedly uncomfortable, leading me to believe that his daughter’s knowledge of hippies did not spring from any positive lessons that he had been passing along.

I grew up in Berkeley in the 60s and 70s. I kept my hair long until it started to turn grey just a few years ago. You’re damn right I’m a hippy.

I gave the charming youngster and her embarrassed father my best smile, and said, “That’s right, sweetheart, hippy.”

She had made my day.

Join us tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion of our Driving Miss Crazy show.