From hell...

Friday at last. Cloudy, heavy, thick with humidity and innuendo…both climatically and socially.
Lunchtime was a veritable disaster. I left work with no idea what I wanted to do…my first mistake. As I drove down Rock Road, I remembered Jason’s Deli, and a baked potato sounded good…so I turned in. I parked right in front of the door, went inside and got in line. I found myself behind ‘Paris and her sidekick’. There they stood…huge Louie bags over their shoulders…mandatory flip-flops, manicured, pedicured, Revloned, streaked, and fake baked. In no hurry at all….because they had all day to linger over lunch and spend ‘daddy’s money’ on expensive crap…they couldn’t decide what to eat. FINALLY, my turn came. I hurriedly ordered ½ a baked potato and a medium drink. Food in hand, I turned to the dining area to find that the only table available was straddling a pole…I took it. On one side sat two foreign men, discussing ‘hot women’ in loud tones…on the other side…ma and pa kettle, in town fur the day!

I shoveled in a spoonful of cheese covered baked potato…which turned out to be totally tasteless. I accepted it as part of this lunch hour from hell, and reached for my iced tea. One big gulp of tea almost caused a very ugly scene. The moment it hit my throat…it tasted like stale cigar smoke. My mind went into overdrive… those horrible stories about what the cooks in restaurant kitchens do to food before serving it (spitting in it…or the famous ‘fecal chili’) spun through my brain…out of control! I gagged as I imagined a cigar butt bobbing around inside the metal tea urn.
Unable to get the despicable image out of my mind…I trashed my lunch and left. Once in the car…I headed for the parking lot at Home Depot, where the Heavenly Snow trailer is parked. Glancing at my watch, I saw that I still had 30 minutes left. To my despair…Heavenly Snow is no longer open all day…they are now open from 2:30 – 9:00 p.m.! Good grief Charlie Brown! As I lamented the events of this day…I heard a ‘ding’…my gaslight had come on! “Fine,” I thought, “to heck with lunch…I’ll head to QT and get gas.” The precious minutes were ticking away rapidly by this point. Wheeling into QT, I realized that every stinking pump was backed up…all the way to the street! Gas was down to $2.59 a gallon! I frantically searched for a short line…there were none! There was no time left for lunch, and certainly no time for sitting in a long line at a gas pump! I drove out…past all of the anxious drivers…their eyes glazed over at the thought of saving all that money! At the last moment, I threw caution to the wind, pulled into the drive through at Braum’s and got a yogurt twist, which I slurped down as I drove. I got back to my desk with about 30 seconds to spare.

What a day!
Be Well!