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The first thing I noticed when I got into the Uber was the smell of salami. I immediately thought about the salami sandwiches with mustard on white bread my mother used to make me for lunches as a child, and like one of Pavlov's dogs', my mouth started to water. I probably hadn't eaten a salami sandwich in 25 years, since my kids were little, but suddenly, more than anything, I wanted one.

I wondered if it would be rude to ask the driver if he had a salami sandwich. But then I was worried that if he had one, he might think I was going to ask him to share it. Or maybe he'd think I was passing judgment on him for eating a salami sandwich. Or maybe he would be insulted because he didn't have a salami sandwich and his car just simply smelled of salami. It was also possible he had one of those car air fresheners that was salami-scented.

It occurred to me that perhaps the smell of salami had nothing to do with the driver. Instead, maybe the previous passenger was the owner of the salami sandwich and had left the residual smell of phantom salami in the car. Maybe the driver wasn't even aware that his car now smelled of salami, in which case I would be the bearer of bad salami news if I mentioned it. Regardless of whether the driver knew his car smelled like salami, the fact remained that I knew it smelled like salami, and because of this, I wanted a salami sandwich.

When I was a kid, I went through a phase in which I ate salami sandwiches every day. My mother tried to mix it up and give me peanut butter and jelly one day and bologna the next. But I was adamant that I wanted salami. Seeing how much I loved salami, I figured I would have passed the gene for it down to my kids, so when the time came to pack them a school lunch, the first thing I made them was a salami sandwich. But alas, my salami DNA must have skipped a generation, because when they got home, the Doritos were gone but the salami sandwiches were untouched. When I asked about them, my kids proclaimed them "yucky."

I realized suddenly that we were getting close to my destination and I wasn't any closer to figuring out the mystery of the salami-scented car. It wasn't critical that I found out -- I certainly could have lived to ride in an Uber another day if I never knew where the smell came from or if I even simply imagined the whole thing. But I was curious, so I finally felt I needed to ask.

"Excuse me," I said, leaning forward to the driver. "Do you mind if I ask you something?"

"Sure," he said amicably.

"Were you eating a salami sandwich, because it smells like salami in here, which is a good thing because I like salami, but I just wanted to know."

He was quiet for a moment, and I was sure I had offended him in some way. Maybe he didn't know his car smelled like salami. Or maybe he was in fact a pastrami guy and saw salami as the lesser lunch meat.

"No, I didn't have a salami sandwich," he said. "But now that you mention it, I kind of want one."

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Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

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