So I go out to light the grill for lunch (which I can do as I work from home), and I see a yellow line drawn on the rear wheel of the truck that we park outside:
I had driven it the night before, and my first thought was whether I had hit a curb and not known it. But I dismissed the thought because the mark would have been circular, not a straight line.
I thought perhaps one of my boys had drawn a chalk line on it for reasons of his own, but I didn’t recollect the boys playing outside the day before or that morning, and I hadn’t seen chalk where they could get to it.
Then my mind went to creepy thriller territory: What if someone else drew a line on my tire for some weird purpose?
Then I saw yellow scattered on the ground near the grill itself:
Pollen.
It had rained overnight, most of the night, I guess; I slept through much of it. But it rained enough for water to stand at the boundary of the asphalt and concrete in our driveway, as it often does, and the pollen floating atop the water affixed to the tire. By the time I went out to grill, though, the water had disappeared, leaving only the line of pollen. And a little mystery for me to solve amid my preparations for grilling a couple of steaks for lunch.
But maybe that’s what the creepy chalk wheel marker wants me to think to lull me into a false sense of security.
