Inconvenience Store
REVIEW: MAYBE THE SHIT’S OVER?
Man, but it’s been a fucking lousy last week and a half.
Down at the ocean with Lisa (my girlfriend) and Jennifer (novice surfing student), my roommate tracked us down the beach where we were sitting after both girls’ abysmal experiences in the waves.
Had a funny look on his face.
Not good.
Told us what was happening that September eleven morning and we all sorta dazedly retreated from the ocean. Disbelieving. Literally. Roomy was talking about a psychotic scenario the likes of which my tiny little brain just refused to absorb. Ditto the girls.
Back at the surf ghetto and damned if his tv wasn’t telling the tale. Somewhere along in the middle of all this, my son arrived.
We all watched the second building collapse and I angrily ripped the tv power cord from the wall socket.
Everybody just sorta went their own ways.
Skipped work that day.
Skipped work the next day and had a rough time of it.
Sorta regathered on Thursday.
Friday, a tropical cyclone tore through town. In the morning, the sirens at Patrick Air Force Base were howling as a tornado warning (and local touchdown) ran it’s course. Roof in the apartment leaking like hell. Water damage and sullen demeanors.
The following Sunday, me and the girlfriend had a blowout and now she’s gone for good. Damn.
Things kind of sulked along until Wednesday, when my roomy duck dived a wave and surfaced into a major feeding frenzy in the surf, and had a large shark hammer into him. Fortunately, the fish got hung up on the fins of his board and merely did a baseball bat whack to his thigh, with miscellaneous snaggle tooth damage to the leg. No stitches. Didn’t get knocked off his board (but he came damn close and there were other larger sharks attacking in the IMMEDIATE vicinity) and successfully caught the next breaking wave to shore. His girlfriend promptly lost her board and while he hobbled upon the sand, unable to go to her rescue in the fish-churning water, he had a little trouble getting a bystander to get off his dead ass and get out there on his board and bring her in. Blank stares and full slacker apathy all around.
Slackers SUCK, in case anybody needs to know. Knock it off, you parasitic bastards.
Have we had enough bullshit already?
Just exactly WHEN is this shit gonna QUIT? I’m SICK of it. STOP already!
And so, today, when things turned a small corner, it came as an incredibly welcome breath of fresh air.
Started out when some customers walked by me as I was doing the parking detail, handed me a set of found rental car keys. No company ID, no tag number on the key ring. All I could do was advise the management of my place, and also the place across the road, that I’d been handed the keys and was going to hang on to them in case somebody came by looking for them.
Several hours went by and nothing doing. Original folks who found the keys went back by and were informed, no joy.
And then, about thirty minutes later, damned if a couple didn’t walk up and inquire about lost keys. BINGO! It felt impossibly good to hand those keys over to their rightful owner. The look on the guy and the girl’s faces was pure stoke and I was feeding off their high. They attempted to reward me and it felt even better to say, “It don’t cost a nickel extra to be nice,” and refuse any reimbursement. Big smiles all around as they drove off.
After that, it started out weird when a cop pulled a car in off of A1A with a headlight out. Cop out, ticket book in hand. Scribble scribble, ticket issued. And then, something must have come over the cop. Next thing I knew, he was lifting the hood of the car and rummaging around in the front of the engine compartment. Fifteen minutes of dickering around under there and all of a sudden, the car had TWO functioning headlights. Way cool! End of ticket. I saluted the cop as he drove by and he tipped his cap right back at me.
And while the cop was having his change of heart, from out of nowhere a guy comes up with a set of bagpipes (no I’m NOT making this up), stands twenty feet away from my admiring ears, and proceeds to make the sweetest sounds this side of heaven for a full half hour, seemingly entirely for my own personal benefit.
INCREDIBLE.
So ok, maybe all the bad shit has run its course and now it’s time for the good stuff to reassert itself?
God, but I sure hope so.
A lifetime resident (despite having travelled all over the damn place at one time or another) of Central Florida, James MacLaren took a four-year degree in death thrills riding giant waves on the North Shore back in the 70's. Wound up in the inconvenience store following a lay off from the Cape, where he was involved with the construction of the Space Shuttle launch pads, among other things. Father of best son in the world.
