Once upon a time, in a car dealership far, far, away….

So it’s like this.

I’m at the Toyota Dealership to get the winter tires on – a huge joke as it’s been warmer than South Carolina here. Seriously. Every bit of good weather on the planet earth has been tucked away in our corner of Newfoundland, for like months now. We go around grinning at each other, exchanging daily reports of the weather elsewhere: did you hear about Roscommon, under two feet of snow? Arf-Arf. And Ontario ? My God, 30 below. Snorfle, snorfle. And now it’s hotter than Florida here, snort, guffaw. Guys are out running in SHORTS here.

So I mention a funny noise coming from the car to the service guy. A noise I enjoyed a lot as my little Toyota - Strawbella - makes out like she’s a big hairy Jeep. But knowing cops and their sensitivity to this kind of thing, I thought I’d better get it checked.

Oh, exhaust pipe and gaskets and bolties, oh my? OK I tell him, go ahead with the extra work.

Then I’m paged again.

Oh, we don’t like the look of your brake pads at all, actually you don’t have brake pads to look at? Well, l think, with over 130,000k on her, baby should have herself a new pair of shoes. OK, I tell him, go ahead.

This all takes hours. I read, I knit, I stretch, I scratch myself, I play with lipstick in the bathroom, I drink some miserable masquerade of faux java and frown at the Timbits ™ in the nice glass container. I feel like a loser. Those with lives are taking the courtesy shuffle to all sorts of destinations around the city. Me, with no life, I’ve nowhere to go, no one to see, nothing to do. Just wait around 4 hours longer than I’d planned for my car to emerge.

Now the waiting room is down to 2 losers. Me and a woman of my age who looks oddly familiar. It comes to me. She looks amazingly like my dear treasured friend who recently died. Only 30 years younger.

I put down the book and say, in the manner in which all Newfoundlanders are speaking in this yucking it up way these days: Sunscreen weather, ha?

She chortles obligingly and says, my god where are you from?

Cork, I say, astonished – and so are you?

Yes, she sez, from East Cork originally.

Go on! sez I, me too! and where did you go to school?

St. Al’s, sez she.

I faint dead away.

Two Old Girls from the same Cork, Ireland, Secondary School, in a Toyota dealership waiting room. In St. John’s, Newfoundland.

And yes, we’re getting together for lunch soon.

You can’t make this stuff up!