Regular Life

Shannon found some notes she had scrawled for me during a trip to Tulsa not long ago. It’s weird, the things one will do for a blog, but it’s grand having a mate willing to aid and abet.

We stopped at a convenience store to get some milk for Ben and a Coke for Shannon. The folks behind the counter were quite a group. A young woman standing behind the register stared out the window as a young man seated on a barstool spoke. Considering that she was ignoring him and I can’t recall the topic, it must have been riveting stuff.

That said, there was something memorable about him.

He wore a shirt that read: Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. There are few t-shirt phrases that I find funny, but that one was pretty good. Just to make a guess, I would have said that the wearer of a shirt like that must be smart and cynical, bordering on pessimistic. As I paid for the drinks, the young man said to an older woman sitting beside him, “Them ain’t no better than these here.” I’ve heard folks say incorrectly that a situation was ironic, but in this case irony was applied as heavily as sunscreen on an Irishman in the Sahara Desert. Sorry, just had to throw in some crappy writing to go with the mood. Certainly, I’m not saying that incorrect speaking grammar always is rooted in stupidity, but it struck me funny.

The older woman’s shirt was another gem. It featured an iron-on transfer of a cartoonish female cat with its back to the viewer but its head looking back over its shoulder, and a protruding posterior. Its mouth was open, presumably to utter the words printed on the shirt: Talk to the booty, the paw’s off duty. I always hated the phrase “talk to the hand,” but now I had something to hate more.

I left there reeking of cigarette smoke. Why are convenience stores the final frontier for employee non-smoking policies? I guess if work entailed my standing and waiting for somebody to rob me, I might take up a bad habit to calm my nerves. Especially if it entailed my dressing up as Little Bo Peep. Guess that reference and, well, you won’t win anything, but you’ll be recognized. As what, I’m not sure.

Comments RSS