Humor

Encounter With What Appeared to Be a Talking Head

As it floated up to the window, I silently shrieked

This story was first published in ‘Every Writer’s Resource,” Feb. 2023. Following is the new, edited version.

Each year during my family’s trip to the shore in my son’s large Tahoe, we’d stop for gas about halfway through, due to it being a gas-guzzler. We seemed to stop at the same gas station every year before we remembered something strange about it that we hoped would go unnoticed by the kids.

Driving the SUV was my son, with his wife sitting in the passenger’s seat. The two girls, Barbara, who was around 3 years old the first year we took them, and her sister, Lena, 2, were in the second row, with me in the third row, amidst some of our belongings.

I don’t remember which gas station we frequented, but I do remember a little person attending the gas pump. It was an older man, in his late 30s or early 40s, with black hair and a large mustache, no expression or smile on his face, and speaking in a surprisingly deep voice.

The first time I remember him, I must have dozed off or something and woke up just in time to see what looked like a floating head coming toward the car, then framed in the window, as the Tahoe was so high off the ground.

On the inside, my heart gave a little lurch, as it took a few seconds to process.

Attendant forgotten

After that first year, as we started our trip, we would forget about the attendant until we found ourselves visiting the same gas station as we had previously.

I no sooner realized where we were; I crossed my fingers and hoped neither of the girls would say anything to embarrass us or him. The first two years were fine; they didn’t notice anything other than the movie they were watching on the little screen in the truck.

Until the third year.

A first encounter for her

As always, the man walked up to the window of the Tahoe and asked in his deep voice, with just his head framed in the window, wearing his usual blank face, and asked slowly, “How much gas do you want?”

Barbara, who was now five, screamed at the top of her lungs, “That little boy has a man’s head! Why does that little boy have a man’s head!?” She became so hysterical that we couldn’t calm her down!

I thought back to the first time I saw just his head in the window, but as an adult, logic took over fairly quickly. To a five-year-old, the only explanation was that the head was attached to a little boy’s body.

That made sense to her, which was as illogical as my reaction, thinking it was a talking head that floated on its own accord.

We apologized to the man who seemed oblivious to what happened, not even acknowledging there was a problem. We were thoroughly embarrassed, though.

Barbara eventually calmed down but did not accept our explanation. She mentioned fearing the man with the boy’s body several times over the next few days. Luckily, the incident did seem forgotten to her.

But I still have a picture in my mind of the first time I encountered what looked like just a head, floating over toward the Tahoe window, then asking in a deep, slow, monotone voice, “How much gas do you want?”

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