About once a year, when weather permits and the movie choice is okay, we take the more than 30 mile drive down to our local drive-in theater.
This year, since we chose a Monday night and the last movie wouldn’t be over until almost 3 a.m., we didn’t have a lot of fellow viewers around.
Which is probably why we noticed him.
He was walking past our car about 20 feet away.
One of my daughters was the first to see him and she shouted. “Hey, there’s ——! What’s he doing here?”
We craned our necks to look in the direction she pointed.
Sure enough, there he was. One of our family members. There was no doubt about it, it was ——‘s build, beard, and gait.
The only problem was that as far as we knew —— did not have a job at the drive-in. And this guy, who is either —— or his doppelganger, was wearing the uniform of the theater and patrolling the grounds.
And so began our search for the truth. We found every excuse possible to walk nearer to the mystery man, only to have him turn and walk in the opposite direction each and every time. Time and time again we approached only to have him retreat.
He almost seemed to be avoiding us.
Finally, just when dusk had almost arrived and the movie was about to begin, his rounds took him again within 20 feet of our car. Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery I decided to take a picture with my phone for future study.
To avoid being accused of stalker activity I was sneaky about it. I whipped my phone up, snapped a shot, and whipped it back down again.
The next day I was eager to look at the pic, sure that I had caught ——‘s image. I wanted to know for sure that the mystery man was not a mystery, but my relative.
But it was not meant to be.
