My adult daughter watches me pack my lunch. I’m on the second of my 2nd shift days. I’ve got two nights of 3rd coming up before the week starts over and I’m on Sunday 1st shift. I pack mixed nuts, an apple, a tuna packet, 2 packets of peanut butter crackers, some coconut water (for electrolytes).
“It looks like you’re packing snack food,” she says. There’s a touch– a SLIGHT touch — of reproach in her voice. It sounds like she gets these flashes of a half-feral father someday living in her attic or basement, some eloquent troll surviving on nuts, fruit, coffee, and peanut butter.
I defend myself by pointing out the tuna packet. She asks me “What do you eat it with?”
“A spoon.”
I really hope I’m eloquent.
Tag Archives: fiction
of signs n rumors of signs
Outside of Murfreesboro at a truck stop. I paid cash for an Apple Danish and an ill-advised ham and turkey sandwich. The woman at the checkout was complaining about the lack of spare change. I told her about the quarter shortage and how no one is spending it, and how a lot of businesses moved to cashless payments. She shook her head and said “Lord yes. It’s true. That’s in the Bible.” She told me to be careful as I left. She was very earnest.
quips once overheard in a bar are sometimes useful
The tee tod totaller flashed a tired looking badge he could’ve gotten out of a Cracker Jack(T) box or off a corpse. It’s so difficult to tell these days who’s an undercover and who’s just semi-retired security guard who couldn’t leap frog the psychological tests. He was annoyed by my lack of being impressed. The young woman with him maintained a nervous smile. Like she’d seen this before. I wasn’t being paid enough to care either way and I’m too old to think courtesy towards a questionable badge puts any positive energy into the world. Let them get free coffee with their sack of burgers. I told him he needed a ticket to get into the Urban Utility and Militia Expo and that there was no outside food. He was fuming. I shrugged. That’s ok, I said. It’s every man’s God-given right to get the side-eye from his wife.