You are standing there with half a tooth on the end of a wire that apparently had been used to anchor it in the socket in your skull because the wire, which looks like tiny re-bar, is speckled with dental cement. You see the tooth backlit against a grey but bright sky outside the sliding window you remember from your childhood home; also a second tooth fell out. You sigh, trying to remember the rest of the dream, and wiggle all your teeth with your tongue, just to make sure. They all still seem to sit firmly.

You still have to get up early because even though it’s a holiday it’s not a holiday for your kid and you feed the cats and start coffee and take a shower and wake her up and drive her to school and before you drive her to school you have breakfast with your wife and joke that probably right after you get your windshield replaced you’ll be driving home and a tractor will merge in front of you at the first traffic circle, a tractor with a big trailer full of rocks, and a rock will bounce out and smack and there goes the brand-new windshield.

After dropping the kid off at school you go to the windshield place, a new place someone told you about, a new place you heard about on the windshield-replacing grapevine, cheaper than the dealer by about 45% and you meet your wife on the road and follow her car there and go in and give the guy your keys while his German shepherd sticks it snouts in your package the whole time and the guy, who looks a lot like a troll if trolls chainsmoked, says pick it up at 4 PM. Then you drive home with your wife and do stuff and at four she drives you back and you pick it up. It looks just fine. Brand new and clean. You try to remember how many you have replaced since moving to Austria 20 years ago. About ten. More than five, anyway. More than the zero you had replaced in the United States. You figure this is because one you have been driving more in Austria than in the US (about 20 to 4) but two more due to the fact that it rarely snowed in the Pacific Northwest where you drove in the US, and when it did snow they generally just left the roads slick and stayed home, as opposed to Austria where everytime a snowman farts a bunch of guys run out and throw gravel on everything because this is Austria: life goes on when it snows. Also probably these guys get paid according to how much gravel they spread, plus a bonus from the windshield industry.

There was the Peugeot, which you probably would have replaced the windshield except then you totaled the car. Then there was the Fiat, how many did you replace there? Three? Then three more on the Mazda, at least.

On your way home, at the first traffic circle, a brand-new tractor pulling a gigantic red trailer, also brand-new, full of rocks, merges in front of you. On the straightaway, where you cannot pass due to oncoming traffic, it loses a rock.

This is all happening in slow motion.

The rock falls off the back of the new red trailer, and bounces. With each bounce it loses a little momentum and comes a little closer to your car. It is now bouncing about six or seven feet high. You let up on the gas to maintain your distance between the rock and your car, but it comes closer.

You step on the brakes. It is down to maybe bouncing three or four feet high.

Then it is just rolling, and it rolls under your car. You give the tractor a lot of room, though.

Leaving for work the next day, you tell yourself, no doubt I’ll probably win the lotto today. And lose a kilo.