I am always and forever a student of humans and I try to make sense of life in northeast Pennsylvania.
Excerpt
All I wanted to do was fill the car up with overpriced gas.
Why can’t all the gas pumps be consistent when it comes to paying? Some say prepay, and some don’t. In this day and age of petrol being as valuable as plutonium I understand that the temptation to pump and jump is greater then ever. So I understand that the service stations who suffer from this kind of theft sometimes want the cash in front. I have dealt with many transactions in my life that were cash in front and I have no big problem with that. The problem was that I did not know that I had to pay cash in front.
At 5 a.m. I was at the pump and even though that’s pretty early I was alert enough to be able to read. So I did. I looked the pump over high and low and saw no sign that I was to pay first and pump later. To me that was sort of like a gift. Instead of walking in and handing over my cash and then walking back and pumping the gas and then walking back to get my change I could complete the transaction in one trip. But no. As soon as I squeezed the pump nozzle a harsh voice came out of some hidden speaker. “You have to prepay,” it shouted. So I went in and gave the man my money.
Now I am sure the labor pool that gas stations have to draw upon for midnight to 6 a.m. workers is pretty shallow. But this guy looked like Festus from Gunsmoke. Only older. I remarked that there was no sign on the pump indicating prepay for cash. He said to me in the same voice that he used on the hidden speaker. “You have to prepay.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But you could put a sign on the pump and save us both time.” “You have to prepay” was his response.
At this point if my long suffering wife had been there with me she would have said, “Let it go.” She wasn’t and I couldn’t. “I understand that you have to prepay,” I said very slowly. “But why don’t you put a sign on the pump that says that?”
“You have to prepay, too many drive-offs” was all I got this time.
So I gave Festus a $20 bill knowing it wouldn’t fill my car but would get me away from there. Only it was not to be so simple. I put the nozzle on automatic and then went to try and scrape dead bugs off the windshield. When I heard the pump click off I heard those words again. “You have to prepay!”
Sure enough I checked the pump and for the first time in my lifetime the auto shut-off had failed. I owed 45 cents more. A lesser man might have cut and run. I went in with my dollar and paid up. And took one more run at it. “You really should put a sign up that says prepay,” I said. Festus just looked at me and said, well you know what he said. Or then again I could be wrong.
Although my physique doesn’t show it I have spent much of my adult life in one gym or another.
It’s funny because as a kid in high school there was nothing I hated with a passion more than going to gym class. Every part of it was misery to me. It wasn’t just that I hated physical exertion although that was a big part of it. I am not gifted in any way for any sport. To say that I throw a ball like a girl is demeaning to girls everywhere. I can’t catch a ball to save my life or the many pairs of glasses that I have had broken trying to avoid being hit in the face. Hit a ball with a bat? It’s to laugh. Run? Is there such an event as the 20 foot sprint? Because after 20 feet I am ready for the showers.
And that brings us to the next part of gym class I hated. The communal shower. Being out of shape all my life standing with all the other teen boys in the locker room was sheer hell. I admit that I have man breasts and if I didn’t admit it the tough guys in the shower with me were certainly glad to point it out. Over and over again.
But as I grew up and became an even bigger adult I started working out in gyms. Working out is not like gym class in that it’s mostly not competitive. It’s also pretty safe for clumsy me as it’s mostly machines that make it hard for me to drop things on my foot or someone else’s.
And generally the locker rooms are equipped with private showers so the amount of time I have to show my shortcomings is thankfully brief. I say generally the showers are private but when I worked in Scranton there was this one gym where it was just like high school. Now this was a pretty upper crust gym. Why they let me in I have no idea but I was there sweating and straining with lawyers, judges and high powered businessmen. And we all paraded around each other lathered up in the little communal shower.
It was a little weird and I remember one time it got very weird. No, not that way, you pervert, but you aren’t far off. I am in the shower when one other guy joins me. Of course guy etiquette in these circumstances dictates you don’t look and don’t talk. But as we rub and scrub I keep hearing this sound. It’s metal on tile and it’s coming from his side of the shower room.
Then I see it. I didn’t want to but there it was. This guy had a not- so-small barbell in his special purpose. A piercing like through the top part, if you get my drift. Now I am a man of the world but I had never seen that before. I glanced at it and couldn’t help it. I said “ow.”
He looked at me and smiled (alright this is already weird enough so stop with those thoughts) and said (and this is exactly what he said) “Yeah, it hurt at first but it was worth it. The ladies like it.”
Yikes, I thought and then I said and this is exactly what I said “Oh.” I think I changed gyms after shortly after that. Or then again I could be wrong.
Copyright 2008 AUTHOR’S NAME. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Post a Comment