Discover a Magical Happening This Instant!

Disclaimer: It’s long. It breaks my usual format. It contains only hints of spiritual value. But it’s true. Alllll true, and could maybe happen to you!

* * * *

It had been a fun weekend. I mean, what’s not to love about your 20-year college reunion?

You drive for 7+ hours, one way, in your new car to get there and when you get there, you discover the Airbnb you chose is legit 5-star.

Then the weekend gets going and your inner extrovert comes alive and parties all over your inner introvert.

You have conversations with people who still make you laugh harder than anything. And your memory gets jogged like stumbling over a rock in the fog every time someone shares something you did that you’d conveniently never once called to mind in the last two decades.

You’d asked God for a Magical Happening going into the weekend, and while none of these quite fit what you’d envisioned as a Magical Happening, you can’t complain. It was great.

So, there you are, on the morning of your last day in town, getting ready for the 7-hour return trip. Though the BnB was incredible, sleep was terrible. Always is when you travel. You stare at the bathroom mirror thinking, “I have 7 hours where no one will see me. So … to shower or not to shower?”

You continue staring. Your hair and face … not good. They need as much help as they can get. Then you realize you don’t even care that you won’t be seen—YOU need to go through the everyday getting-ready routine for YOU.

So, you shower. AND do your makeup. And it feels good.

You hit the road.

As you drive, you can’t help but apologize to eastern Washington as cruise down it. It’s got a bit of an eye sore going on from Spokane to the Columbia River Gorge. Brown, brown, and more brown.

“Dear Lord, thank you for this audio book to make me laugh out loud because what’s outside my window makes me want to cry my head off,” you say-pray.

Miles roll by. You pass the first sign for a rest stop cuz you’re good. Forty-five minutes later, however, the next blue sign for a rest stop has tremendous appeal. Never mind the little white sign below it saying “closed.” You choose not to believe it.

Taking the extended exit, you finally hit the stop sign where you must go either left or right, and there it is, a sign as plain as day with an arrow pointing left: “Rest Stop: CLOSED.” And to the right? Brown nothingness as far as the eye can see.

Well, okay, and a Conoco.

You’re only a quarter of a tank down, but your full bladder screams, “That’s a small price to pay for relief! Buy your way into that gas station restroom NOW.” 

So, you take a right and follow your body’s strategy for relief.

As you stand cross-legged by the tank waiting for it to fill, you take in the scene. As previously noted, there’s not much to see … except now at least some humans pepper the territory.

Standing outside the gas station store—which of course holds your highly sought-after toilet—you see a short, huge-busted black woman talking to a tall, lanky white guy. The woman’s shirt reads: THINK ABOUT IT.

You roll your inner eyes. “What am I supposed to think, lady?” you silently ask.

The nozzle clicks off, you hastily grab your purse and beeline toward the building. A tall man brushes past you on his way out. You glance up and do a double take. Is that…? No way, that guy looks exactly like the guitar player of a band you recently discovered and have seen twice in concert! (You know his face because you had a fan-crush on him and followed just him—rather than the whole band—on Instagram for a while.)

As you’re shaking your head, marveling how much that guy looked like him, you turn around and nearly run into T-shirt girl.

Then it hits you like a splat of ketchup on your white shirt—she is the lead singer (with an insane voice, btw), the only woman in an otherwise all white dude band … meaning that guy is the guitar player and THAT BAND is here! Right now!

After you accomplish your restroom mission, you nearly fly out of the building (now that you’re no longer bursting at the seams) and all the men of the band are standing around outside their van.

It’s just a van, not labeled or anything, and it’s towing a U-Haul (you love that you know it's cuz they're a band; they obs have instruments to carry around). And there you are, your paths intersecting in the middle of Podunk nowhere. This is your chance.

“Excuse me, are you guys Dirty Revival?” you ask crush dude.

All the guys look up, faces also now lighting up.

“Yeah!”

“I’ve been to two of your concerts and love you guys! What are you doing here?”

“We’re just wrapping up a tour with about five stops and are heading home to Portland now. Where are you from?”

You continue conversing, just happy to have your day made and to be clearly making theirs. Because you are Girl at Random Gas Station Who Knows Band, you are now to them: Girl Signifying They’ve Hit the Big Time.

You talk about said tour, where they’ll be playing on New Year’s Eve, and whatever else fans and bands talk about.

When it gets to the point where any normal person would ask for their autographs and really put the icing on this whole cake of a moment, you go blank. You can’t think of anything to say. Awkwardness is trying hard to elbow its way front-and-center, so you offer a cheery, “Well, keep up the good work!” and head back to your car.

And as you drive away, you realize the significance of it all: sometimes Magical Happenings will take place when you least expect them … when the weekend’s in your rearview mirror and you think your chances are behind you … but instead? You showered. You got ready. And you hit the open road before you, only to discover it holds nothing but possibility.