Posted by John
Today I had to travel to podunk southern Illinois to do a site survey on a tiny little community hospital that was so old, Lincoln was circumcised in it. It was the type of site visit that from the outset of the day had the potential to be the most boring experience of my life or the most horrific. I’d say it landed somewhere in the middle.
Things started to get interesting after I arrived and met the maintenance supervisor, Charlie, who was a behemoth of a man and the one whose care I would be in throughout the day. Charlie was perhaps the nicest man on the face of the earth but that didn’t make him any less intimidating when he greeted me with a bear paw-like hand that made my own hand look like the foot of a chickadee inside of it.
Things got more interesting shortly after when he ushered me into the surgery ward while a procedure was underway. I was like, “Look Charlie, I’m not in any hurry, we can wait until this procedure is done.”
“Oh, it’s not problem, I’m in here all the time.”
No, I think it kind of is a problem, especially from the perspective of the State Board of Health… “Seriously, I can wait. We’ll just come back.”
“Nonsense. Here, just put these on,” as he handed me a fabric hairnet and little booties for my shoes. “Here, you’ll need one of these too,” he said, handing me a white coat he procured from a rack hanging in the hallway, “Not sure if it’ll fit you though,” as he was putting on a similar one for himself.
Indeed, my white coat didn’t fit. In fact, it looked like it belonged to a hobbit, if hobbits had a surgical center in the Shire. I had to raise my arms straight into the air and wrastle the coat onto my body and even then the sleeves only came down to mid-forearm. The fucking thing had my shoulders pulled so taut it felt like a full-body Chinese finger trap.
Charlie took one look at me and just started laughing.
Yeah, real funny dickface. Your white coat looks like it was tailored for a fucking yeti and here I am in a goddamn medical straight jacket that Houdini himself couldn’t escape from. Laugh it up. And I’m pretty sure it’s imparting more biological agents onto my person than I am onto it. Seriously, this thing smells like someone’s gallbladder. While we’re keeping up sanitary appearances here do you have a surgical mask I can use to cover up my bellybutton or some shit?
As humiliating as that was the rest of the visit was fairly uneventful and I got on the road home at a decent hour. Decent enough in fact that it afforded me enough time to make the bad decision to pull off in another little shit-town in southern Illinois at a local antique store. Truthfully I was sucked in by the Christmas decorations they had displayed in the front window, thinking I could find some decent ornaments for my mom’s stocking or something. I walked into the sound of two women fighting in the back room about the best type of hairspray or something until one of them noticed I was there, “We got someone here,” she said emerging from the back, “Well hi there! Can I help you find something?” she asked in a genuinely friendly tone.
“Uhh… no, I’m just browsing,” I said.
“Where you coming from?” she asked.
“Mount Vernon.”
“You form Mount Vernon!?!” she exclaimed with more than just a little excitement.
“Well, no. I was just in Mount Vernon. I’m from Nashville.”
“Nashville, Illinois!?! I got a coon huntin’ buddy from Nashville! Bobby Miller, from Nashville, Illinois.”
Ah, fucking-a, what did I just walk into here? “Actually, I’m from Nashville, Tennessee.”
“Nashville, Tennessee!?! You a singer!?!”
Oh, God save me… “No. No, I’m not.”
“Well what you doin’ in these parts???”
Seriously, this went on for a solid 6 or 7 minutes as she followed me around the store as I observed the most pathetic collection of antiques I could have ever imagined. The old saying in the antique business that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure was entirely inaccurate in this place. It would have been more appropriate to say that one man’s junk is still a bunch of goddamn junk regardless of who owns it. I couldn’t even find a single piece of shit that I would consider buying and throwing away, let alone giving to my mother as a gift, but it was entirely evident that the woman was so enamored with the city boy from Nashville, Tennessee who had just wandered into her store that she would have been positively devastated if I didn’t buy something from her and I certainly didn’t have the fortitude of character to walk the fuck out of the place without making a purchase. So I pointed to a 12” tall carved wooden reindeer in the front window and asked how much it was.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Are you shitting me? You don’t know what the price of that stupid thing is?
“Let me call Billy,” she said as she went to the phone and dialed up Billy, who I could only assume was either an expert in carved reindeer or was like the Deal Or No Deal banker dude who set the price on shit over the phone. “Hey Billy! How much is that wood reindeer in the Window?... The wood one…. In the window… It’s wood… Right in the front window…” That went on for several seconds until, “Okay, I’ll tell him,” she said hanging up the phone. “$16!”
$16! Sixteen-fucking-dollars!!! I wouldn’t spend $16 even if Old Saint Nick himself carved this shit out of endangered North Pole woolly mammoth tusks!
Just then the other woman emerged from the back, “$16! That thing ain’t worth $16! It ain’t worth more than $8!”
Thank god, a voice of reason from the peanut gallery!
I briefly turned to look at the reindeer that was going to be my folly and to contemplate what I’d gotten myself into, then turned back to find a 15 year-old kid dressed from head to tow in camouflage had literally materialized from thin air and was like, “That thing ain’t worth $16! I found it in a box in the back!”
Jesus, what is happening??? Where the fuck did that kid come from? Was he here the whole time, hiding in his camou behind a poinsettia or some shit???
“You could get that thing at a craft store for $4!” The second woman said.
“I wouldn’t spend more than $2 on it,” the kid replied. I felt like I was on an episode of Hillbilly Price is Right.
“Call Billy back,” the second woman said, “He don’t know what he’s talking about.”
So the first dialed Billy up again, “Hey Billy! That wood reindeer ain’t $16… The wood one…. In the window… It’s wood… Right in the front window… It ain’t $16,” again, this went on forever. “Okay, I’ll tell him,” she said hanging up. “$10!”
$10! Ten-fucking-dollars!!! We were just at 2! How did we jump back to 10???
Apparently Hillbilly Bob Barker had the final say when it came to pricing his shit because the three of them just stood there staring at me with bated breath waiting on my next move, like they were all thinking, “Well, what’s it gonna be, city boy? You gonna spend 10 bucks on this reindeer or you just gonna steal food right off our plates while you run home to the big city?”
Jesus Christ! Fine, whatever, “I can do $10,” I said as I pulled my wallet out with more than a little spite.
“Don’t be giving me no hundreds!” The first woman exclaimed.
Fucking-A, what do I look like here? “No, it’s just a 20. Can you do a 20?” Just then the kid went and retrieved the reindeer and set it down on the counter as the first woman was getting me my change. I looked down at the stupid reindeer and fuck me if it wasn’t broken. Seriously, the tail was broken clean off the goddamn thing!
You have got to be shitting me! You are selling me a goddamn broken reindeer that my cat could do a better job whittling out of its own shit and here I am giving you $10 for it?!?
But alas, I was committed at that point and I honestly figured I was spending $10 just to get the hell out of there.
I walked out of that stupid fucking store holding that stupid fucking reindeer just positively fuming and thinking to myself, “If only I was Pierce Brosnan I could have totally Thomas Crown Affaired their asses and stolen this goddamn thing.” Whatever.
You better believe I’m still giving it to my mom.
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