Hide The Salami

Oscar Mayer Wienermobile crashes into Wisconsin home.

I remember how back when I thought the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile was merely the stuff of urban legend. About 15 years ago or so a group of my friends and I somehow acquired these little Hot Wheels sized weinermobiles, all of which sat on the surface of some location in our respective homes. But I never knew that there actually was a real car shaped like, well to be frank (snerk!) a giant sunburned schlong. Then one night I was on the phone with my friend S., who was chatting with me about a rather serious issue while leaning against her kitchen window over in the Chapel Lake apartments on Laskin Road, overlooking the part of Laskin right before you merge into VA. Beach Boulevard or the interstate. It was nighttime, and all she could see of the traffic down in the street was the occasional car passing under the lone street light before disappearing into the darkness. Suddenly in the middle of her conversation she screams and drops the phone, and all I can hear is her laughing so hard she must surely be on the verge of hyperventilating. I am freaking out, hoping that she is laughing and not just having a coronary -- but when she finally picks the phone back up off the floor she apologises for spazzing out, but as she was looking out onto lonely street, lost in her serious thoughts and quiet conversation, a OSCAR MAYER WEINERMOBILE passed right under the street light before vanishing back into the darkness. Both of us looked at our toy weinermobiles sitting on our apartments and roared with laughter. It was like a sudden Loch Ness Monster sighting, and then nothing. It was so surreal. So Dada. But we never doubted its existence again. Hoping perhaps, one day, I'd be visited by the Weinermobile myself, like a magical spectre in the night.

But like these people in Wisconsin discovered, be careful what you wish for.