I once read a fantasy story about this guy who had an auto accident on a remote country road. He was stretched out on the ground, with multiple injuries, waiting for an ambulance. A large crowd of people suddenly appeared. This always seems to be the case at an accident. A large crowd of people appear to see the blood and gore. He was taken to the hospital and survived. Then the strange thing happened. Twenty years later, he had a similar accident in another part of the country on a remote country road. While waiting for the ambulance a large group of people appeared to see the accident. He recognized these folks as the same ones who were observing him twenty years before in a different part of the country. It turns out, they sere all ghost or spirits ready to escort him to the hereafter in case he died. This is the same crowd that fills the emergency room waiting areas on Saturday nights around the country.

I’m having a similar experience this week. I guess you would call it a surreal experience. It’s almost like a dream while I’m awake. We are in Albuquerque, New Mexico attending a music camp with the grandkids as we have done for the past eight years. We stay in student apartments on the campus of the University of New Mexico, and it’s a little like camping. Naturally, we have to make a trip to the local Walmart for supplies. That’s where my surreal experience occurred.

I swear, it’s the same crowd of people here in Albuquerque that I wrote about last week in Temple, Texas. The place was full of identical folks. I thought maybe they had chartered buses or some other huge vehicle to transport them to the store in New Mexico. There they all were, standing in line at the checkout stands. Their bodies were covered in tattoos with various piercings and they wore the same cartoon character clothing. The women had most of their pendulous breast exposed and buttocks the size of Goodyear blimps pulling up the rear. The men were adorned in T- shorts and baseball caps. The women were something I may have seen in the National Geographic Magazine when I was a kid. The only minor difference is the New Mexico crowd was slightly thinner that those in Texas.

The only thing I can figure is that these folks aren’t real. They have to be spirits waiting to escort me to the hereafter. I’m not sure I want to go where they came from. This may be a bad sign because none of them would fit into the image I have of an angel. All I want to do is get back to the safe haven of the porch. In the meantime, I’m staying in the apartment with a book until the camp is over. I sure hope I don’t have to go back to the store for more supplies