In this weather! Okay. I'll go get a bag of ice.
Also a soda. I know sodas are bad for you! You know how you grew up in a more-or-less regular house where people drank milk, water, juice? I grew up in a convenience store. I was always sugar-ified, I was alway caffeinated. Check out my teeth. It took years to make them look this borderline acceptable.
Nowadays I drink sugar-free, caffeine-free soda - one guy on Twitter once said that caffeine-free Diet Coke should be called "Coke Science" - & I know it tastes pretty awful, but it has a taste at least. Water just doesn't.
Used to be I'd go through half a twelve-pack of sodas a day, or more. I'm done with that. I make it kind of a schlep to get soda - I usually get one before a radio show - but unless I'm willing to drive to a convenience store to get a fountain drink, I drink water. Or, you know, beer. But not beer all the time!
By the way, I grew up in the South, where people say "coke" to mean any carbonated beverage. I just like saying soda. It confuses people, that & my lack of accent. They think I'm from the midwest. Nope! Texas born & raised!
At the Speedway, I waited patiently while someone stood in front of the long soft drink dispensing apparatus, apparently finishing up his self-soda-creating experience. He was taking a long time. He was standing directly in front of the place where the average cup size I get is (the largest, because I was getting my seventh soda free, thank you very much), & also where the Caffeine Free Diet Coke (sorry, Coke Science) spigot was. But he wasn't moving. He was hunched over, fiddling with something in his hands.
Rudely, I moved in to get a cup. I noticed he was counting large bills - twenties & fifties - which he had pulled from an envelope inside a baggie. We made eye contact - I realized he was what we now call "mentally challenged." Maybe he just got a government check, maybe cashed it at a local place. Maybe he just keeps his money like that. He was not aware, immediately, that he was in my way. He was happy to say hello to someone.
A little embarrassed about being impolite, I stepped back & waited for him to finish. It took a while, & it took a very large woman in too few clothes all but pushing him out of the way to clear space for me. Luckily he didn't drop anything. The next time I saw him, he was fumbling with his money at one of the cash registers (do they still call them that?), & to his credit, the cashier was being very patient, although there was a line of us at the time.
The ice bought & grabbed from the machine outside - the perennial questions, why is ice the sort of product that they trust customers to grab themselves? & its opposite, who would want to steal bags of ice? - & I passed him as he - who, you'll recall, was at check-out a few minutes before I was - was leaving. He said hello to me, his eyes bright, as we walked by one another.
Oddly, when I got to my car, & turned to see where he was heading, he had disappeared.
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