Scenes from a 7-11

Now I was just about to conjure up some new thoughts, or attempts at new ones, when I realized I had this draft sitting in the folder from August 15, 2009. So instead, let's make like an adopted dog and expound...right...

I'd outlined a few details and, using the powers of research and memory, here is the setting: it was a Friday evening becoming Saturday morning or, rather more likely, already become Saturday morning at that point. My buddy and I stopped in at the 7-11 and it was awfully warm so we may have been opting for slurpies, even though they tend to give me temporary bronchitis, where my lungs feel frozen and irritated, resulting in an unusual cough that I've never otherwise experienced. All it's really leading up to is this unusual fellow (I seem to like the word unusual today) that was ahead of us at the register. He was sharing tidbits with the cashier and though the cashier was nonresponsive, that did little to discontinue his commentary. I might not have remembered them all distinctly, but I wrote them down. The following lines were delivered in order:

"It's humid outside." About three seconds pause, awaiting response but then, maybe also not.

"It's air-conditioned in here." Another pause, slightly longer.

"I'm buying ice cream," followed by nervous awkward laughter from speaker. He was, in fact, buying ice cream. Similar length pause.

"I just saw G.I. Joe." I am inclined to believe him. This was the end of the exchange, and then he exited, stage center.

While trying not to look at my buddy and erupt into laughter I noted a chocolate calculator among the items at the register to entice last second purchase. It's tagline: "smells like real chocolate!". Yes, this was not actually an edible calculator, merely a functional one, that was chocolate-scented. And they say kids say the darndest things...

And all the while, all the while there were these two creepy dudes chillin' by the magazine section which is at the front of this particular store — front as in doors and entryway, not front as in register location. And all the while, from before we even entered the store they are simply staring at us and otherwise loitering. I wish I caught a glimpse of what they were reading, or remembered their outfits, because I really think it'd add to the tale.

Flash-forward to the last couple of dozen times I've been in a Sev — I tend to go at least every Saturday night to mix coffee (usually Brazilian Bold) with hot chocolate (and sometimes that chocolate cupcake flavor), and then pour in five or six shots of whiskey. And the cashiers I get are always hella tight. And in the one Sev, the one I almost never go into but walk by the most frequently, in that one I frequently see the same 1-3 cops, and outside a homeless man shaking a cup. I don't know if it's the same guy because I always try not to really look. But the cup, the cup is always different.