The Ice Maker Isn't Working

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.