vituperation

September 27, 2002

Congratulations go out to reader Laura who was randomly selected from all the people who correctly told me that the text from Monday’s entry was the first line of Stephen King’s It, one of the finest books ever penned.

I got the best rejection letter yet today. It came back in my SASE without the picture (par for the course). Inside the envelope was my original letter, with "thanks, but we’re not interested" written in the upper left corner.

Jeez.

It has become something of a custom over the last couple of months for me to stop at the Atlanta Bread Company on my way to work Friday mornings to pick up a couple of their fine cinnamon rolls for my eating pleasure. Some mornings, I also get a big honkin’ cup of their Vanilla Nut coffee, because I like the frou-frou coffees.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Today I stopped in for my Friday ritual, and when I went into the Bread Company there was a line of people from the counter to the door. I love my cinnamon rolls, but I can’t think of any food that’s worth standing in a line that long, given the general slowness (2-4 minutes per customer, because of the time it takes to get the goodies off the racks of pans) of the usual line.

Any food except steak, maybe, but I digress.

I left and went instead to a big grocery store, because let’s face it, you can always find something junky at a grocery store. And find stuff I did - a pack of premade sticky buns and some almond m&ms. Grocery store bakery foods mostly suck

I ended up throwing away more of the sicky buns than I ate, but ate about 2/3 of the m&ms. Damn, almond m&ms are fine. And they have monounsaturated fat in the almonds and lots of antioxidants in the chocolate. Hell, they’re almost good for you. Or at least they should be.

Again, I digress.

but they can scratch a sweet-tooth itch in a pinch. There was only one checkout lane open due to the early hour, so I headed to that one with my junk. The cashier - a nice guy whom I’ve seen there on the other occasions when I’ve gone to the grocery store on Friday mornings - walked over and picked up the sticky buns. He’s a stocky sort of fellow, maybe an inch taller than me and probably weighing about 260-ish.

“Looks like you’re going to have a good morning,” he said, smiling and scanning the sticky buns.

Why yes, yes I do grin every time I type “sticky buns”.

“Yeah, it’s my Friday junk food,” I said, returning his smile.

“Oh, you only do this once a week?”

“Yep, just on Fridays.”

I’m not sure what happened next, but suddenly I felt like Dorothy, whipped out of Kansas by a twister and set down in the whimsical land of Oz. Fortunately no wicked witches were harmed when I landed.

“I have to go up to [insert small Tennessee town name here] and get some more speed, and I know I haven’t lost a single pound this week,” he said.

I smiled and nodded stupidly, blinking. “Oh yeah?” I said.

“Yeah, they’re going to shoot me, I just know they are. I haven’t been taking as much of the speed because it keeps me up at night. I’m going to ask them for some Xanax to help take the edge off the speed so I can sleep. Sort of the whole upper-downer thing, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said, continuing to smile.

“He’s got a great little thing set up there. He comes in once a week and weighs people then gives us all prescriptions for our speed. And they fill the prescriptions right there for you. I need that speed, you know?” he said, “I mean, you’re not a big guy but I used to weigh four hundred pounds and it’s a battle.”

Heh.

“It’s so easy to gain it all back. I don’t know what I’d do without my speed,” he finished.

“Actually,” I said, “I used to weigh almost 400 pounds myself.”

He congratulated me and stuck out his hand, which I shook.

“Then you know just what I’m talking about. Last time I was there he was prescribing the speed to this little rail of a woman. I mean, she weighed about a hundred pounds. I can’t believe he was giving her that stuff. She didn’t need it for her weight, that’s for sure. I asked him about it and he told me he didn’t give her any. I said, ‘I just saw her get it filled over at the pharmacy window. I’m not here to bust you or anything, I just didn’t see why she would need those.’ Do you know what he told me?”

“What?” I asked.

“He told me that she’s Elton John’s stylist! Can you believe that?”

“Wow, that’s something,” I said weakly, still sort of reeling from it all.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pill bottle with no label.

“These are probably illegal,” he said, “but look at this.”

He took the lid off the bottle and dumped a single small yellowish pill into his hand. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I nodded wisely at him.

“I take two of these a day and they keep me up all night. Can you believe they want me to take four?” He looked expectantly at me.

“That’s something,” I said, looking longingly at the door leading out to the parking lot and my Jeep.

“I’d go crazy on four of these,” he said conspiratorily, “I mean, they keep me from eating at all during the day but I get so jumpy on them.”

Another man walked up to the checkout counter just then. The cashier told me to “have a great day, my friend,” and turned to the new customer.

I left the store, confused about it all.