A Short One from Back in the Day.

I ran into an old friend today and was reminded of a story from when we worked together briefly in the mid-1980s. I was a stock boy at a local grocery store where marijuana use was rampant and though I was never a big pot smoker, I smoked more when I worked there than I did in the rest of my entire life combined. One day, me and a buddy of mine left for our daily lunch / THC break and this nerdy honor student goody-two-shoes kid I’ll call Jeff invited himself along. As my buddy Dave lit up a joint, he passed to the nerd that both of us knew had probably never tried it before. He tried laying on a bunch of BS about his imaginary stoner escapades, so Mike kept lighting up just for his benefit. We probably smoked four times our usual amount that time. When we got back to work, Mike and I were far too baked to be of much use anywhere and Jeff was absolutely blotto, unable to do anything but emit an incessant and paranoid laugh, trip over his own feet and knock stuff over. Knowing no good was going to come of this, I decided to get out of public view and went into the freezer to do inventory.

While I was in freezer, I opened up a box of Dove bars to satisfy my munchies. Dave hid in back cleaning up the loading docks. Jeff wandered manically up and down the aisles, stumbling over product displays and freaking out the customers with his insane laugh. The manager, Darren, finally got pissed and laid into him several times, which only succeeded in increasing Jeff’s paranoia. Darren finally got fed up and went to find me so he could blow off some steam.

I had just finished my fifth Dove bar (out of a box of six) when Darren walked into the cooler. Luckily I had just discarded the stick so I didn’t get caught eating the inventory. The box of them however, was sitting in plain sight but Darren didn’t see it when he walked in.

Darren then went off on a tangent about how Jeff was screwing up out on the floor. He complained about the stuff that had gotten knocked over and how weird he was acting. He then asked me what I thought was wrong with the kid.

I looked at him with my bloodshot eyes and said, “I bet the loser’s on dope.” I then listed off a bunch of symptoms he should look for.

He thanked me for my help and then went to leave. When he hit the door though, he saw the mostly empty box of Dove bars I had been eating and exploded. He lifted it up and yelled, “What the hell is this?!?!?”

I looked at the box and, without skipping a beat, replied, “It’s that fucking Jeff kid! He was in here acting funny when I started my inventory! I bet it was him!”

Darren then loosed a stream of vindictive from between his clenched teeth and told me that he was going to castrate the punk. I stopped him before he hit the door though and picked up the Dove Bar box. “Say Darren, there’s only one ice cream bar left in here and we can’t sell it. You mind if I have it?”