OMG

I’m visiting Randy and we decide to get some Coke squishies (what Randy calls a Slushy) -- we know I will need the sugar and caffeine to keep up with our planned late night visit – especially with Randy being Captain Graveyard-up-all-Night. Everything is going fine, the squishy machine dispenses two beautifully textured American-super-sized beverages - I suppose this is when we should have first seen-the-signs. Traditionally, if you look wrong at these machines they give you some sloppy mess instead of what you are looking for, and getting two perfect squishies from the same machine, within the same hour, on the same day, well, it is truly some sort of miracle.

We get to the counter. We ante up our drinks on the counter, and toss in some snacks to raise the bid. I think I tossed one extra thing from an impulse buy rack at the counter - I'm sure that is what started the chain-reaction. The woman behind the counter rings everything up -- I hold out my ten-spot. She just looks at me like some sort of cow with a train barreling down on her and won't reach for the ten.

"You sure you don't want something more?" she says with a chilling tone
of-something-bad-to-come.

Then it was my turn to look like soon to be burger on the grill. I'm not sure what Randy was thinking at this time; maybe he caught on sooner than me. My brain clicked a few more times, made a quick list of replies, did a quick-sort, then sent me the answer:

"Look, Bitch, just give me the squishes and the candy, I don't need a fucking lottery ticket, or what-ever your up-sales-trained-brain is thinking I need to buy".

Of course, instead I said, "Uh, no, this is fine, thanks". Smile.

Her eyes just got bigger, "Are you sure? You could just add in some jerky or something it’s only like-a-dollar", she picked a shriveled stick out of a bucket and waved it like a feable not-so-magical wand.

My brain shattered. The characters “WTF?” scrolled blinking across my cracked monitor. Something triggered my fight or flight system, my blood-pressure rose, my heart-rate elevated, the hair stood up on my neck as blood rushed to my head to feed my brain. Time compressed. My mind calculated the complex math needed to resolve freaky social conditions; it struggled mostly with different reasons why anyone would possibly be pushing jerky tonight. Is this some piss-poor signal that we are standing in the middle of a hold up? Is she making some rude sexual joke by waving around dried meat? Is this some code for buying drugs at 7-11? Is this to make figuring out taxes easier? Are they now paying commission on jerky sales at 7-11? Why is jerky only a dollar in Oregon?

It felt like a minute passed, and then I realized she was pointing at the cash register read-out.

It did read: 666

“Are you sure?” she pleaded.

I told her, as nicely as I could, that I didn’t believe in old myths or some such. She complained, but wiped her hands clean of the event and sold me my devil-treats.  I could almost feel her making some old curse gesture behind our backs as we left, tossing some salt over her shoulder, and then cleaning the register, just to make sure.

Randy and I later agreed that things might have gone differently if she had said, “I’m going to give you one of the squishies free, to avoid the wrath of the beast”. With the prospect of free a squishy, neither of us would have blinked an eye.