[AAA] What happens when –

You drive in the lower forty-eight states with a license plate from the state of Alaska:

An older man walking with a cane in the parking lot at the Target in Alexandria literally flags you down.  I’m driving past him [after stopping for bread and pb&j for the trip] and he starts waving.  First I think that maybe he’s confusing me for someone he actually knows or maybe he’s just overly friendly.  I casually wave back and keep driving and he keeps waving.  Nearly frantically.  I stop, roll down the window and turn down Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows audio book that has occupied my attention since St.Paul.   [Turns out audio books are the bee’s knees!]  Where about in Alaska do I live, he asks.  He’s been there three times, the first in 1949.  He has family in Dawson City.  Don’t try and get a hotel there.  All the oil people have the rooms and they get helicoptered out everyday.  Have a good trip.  Okay.  Thanks.

A man in a small green Honda passes me on the interstate, somewhere before I hit North Dakota.  He passes me in the left lane and then I move over behind him to go around whoever was in front of me.  All of a sudden, his hands start going crazy.  Like he takes both hands off the wheel to hold up eight fingers for me to see.  [I’m assuming for me to see.]  He keep doing it over and over, once in a while taking the hand that hand three fingers down to put it back on the wheel.  But what the heck?  Eight?  I thought maybe it was how cute he thought I was on a scale of one to ten but in my sweat pants and scrubby hair?  Probably not.  Is it some sort of Alaska code?  He seemed pretty excited and took a fair amount of effort to hold up his hands … but I certainly did not understand.  Eight?

An older suburban is riding my bumper – two younger-than-I boys.  I move back to the right lane when I can so they can go around me.  Frankly, they scare me a bit, driving so fast.  They drive past me and while doing so, the guy in the passenger seat quite literally hangs out the window and stares at me as they drive past.  As in, puts his head out the window and stares back at me and the car as they continue down the road.  

My friend, Jenni, commented on a previous blog post about the Alaska plates how excited some kids must be to see me drive past.  Think of the games of license plate bingo I can help complete.  I only hope so.  In addition to the creepy/weird mentioned earlier, I hope I’m helping some kids out.  I’ll take that over the creepy/weird.