Dearest Rachel –
So, yesterday, Daniel and I sort of went slumming for Sunday dinner; let’s face it, fast food isn’t exactly what you think of going to after a church service. Just like how one thinks one is supposed to dress up to go to church (not that this happens at our church all that much – indeed, it’s the surest way we have to tell who’s not a regular, if they dress up to attend. Which, I should point out, nobody makes an issue of; people should be comfortable at our church no matter what they’re wearing), it seems more natural to go to some place a little more sit-down fancy than a regular hamburger joint.
Then again, it could be argued that Culver’s is a little bit further up the ladder than your typical fast food joint; there is a level of sit-down nature to it, complete with the fact that they actually bring your order to your table, like a proper waitstaff (although there’s no requirement to tip your quasi-server, which is nice). Still, Daniel has no great love for the place – and you know as well as anyone about his dislike of hamburgers, so I don’t need to go into details about that – but as he couldn’t come up with a suitable counter to my request that we stop at the nearest place after dropping off the weekly bulletin at Meema’s, he ended up shrugging and going along with my suggestion.
All of which is rather beside the point of today’s letter, such as it is.
In any event, while we were standing around, deciding what were going to eat (and at least that much was easy on Daniel, since while they have chicken sandwiches, they only have a few varieties, making the choice fairly easy for him. He had thought I could order a Curderburger – this hamburger topped with an extra patty made out of cheese curds, which, while tempting, would be insanely caloric for my purposes – and let him have the curd patty, but it seems that, like the McRib, it only shows up for a limited time, and it had come and gone already), I noticed that they had a promotion going on, in which they were raising money for charity by offering these for sale…
I offered to get one – or even the whole set – for Daniel, seeing as he’s now the proud(?) owner of a Jeep himself, but he declined. Quite vehemently. He finds the whole concept of the ducks on the dashboard to be both mystifying and weird, and wants no part of it. I think it comes from one of the channels the two of us watch together (and, if I recall correctly, the three of us used to watch together); the host also expresses confusion when a meme comes up about Jeep owners and rubber ducks.
Still, once it became clear that Daniel would be buying one, we did what we often do when something crosses our path that we don’t understand – but that must have an intriguing explanation out there that those in the know find fully intuitive:
“Hey Copilot…!”
Now, I should mention that we don’t consult with Copilot as often as we used to. Some time since getting home from our last trip, the program updated itself, and my account tends to get throttled after only a few enquiries. I get that these A.I. companies need to make money – and I will say that, for the requests I do make of it, I still get similarly in-depth answers as the ones it used to give; better, in fact, conversationally speaking. But when the conversation stops because I haven’t got a paid subscription, it breaks the illusion rather abruptly. I am debating about whether or not to subscribe to one or another, and that might be a letter all its own, but it’s neither here nor there for now.
What Copilot did tell us was the lore behind the ducks and the Jeeps – and for those reading over your shoulder who are already part of the Jeeping community, I apologize for stating the perfectly obvious, but nobody told us about it until we asked. To this day, Tyler Zed still remains baffled, so you might want to fill him in.
As the story goes – and it’s a fairly recent one, only dating from mid-2020 – a woman in Ontario had a tense encounter in a parking lot, and as a means of counteracting the negativity of the incident, she took a rubber duck that she’d bought for a friend, wrote a short little note (“nice Jeep”) to go with it, and left it on a nearby Wrangler for the owner to discover as a random act of kindness. The owner loved it, and told her to post it online, and the whole thing went viral; Jeep owners began leaving ducks with short friendly notes (“nice Jeep – hope you’re having a good day,” that sort of thing) throughout North America. Those ducks that the Jeep owners have on their dashboard aren’t so much decorations as badges of honor; these represent how many times they’ve been gifted with these kindnesses. Meanwhile, those same owners tend to keep ducks of their own to distribute to fellow owners, but those are kept in cupholders and elsewhere, as they’re not meant to be displayed unless they’ve been presented.
Evidently, it’s gotten so widespread that even the manufacturer embraced it – although it hadn’t gotten so far down into the corporate culture that Daniel’s cousin Will knew what was going on with that. In his defense, though, it was his first full week on the sales floor. It’s even spawned copycats, with Subaru trying to start something involving cows (“moo moo Subaru”) and Chevrolet utilizing sharks, although I’ve no idea how that connection was made. Personally, I would think that sheep would be better for Jeep, if only for the rhyme:
I know this is a little flippant for a letter, honey, but it’s not as if every day has to have something heavy or intense going on. Besides, maybe you just learned something from this; I know I did when we looked it up. Not that it’s persuaded Daniel to join in with the rest of the community, although who knows? Maybe the first time someone ‘ducks’ him, he’ll change his mind.
