“You know,” Philip said after I was left alone at the Counter at the Breakfast Club,
“you three are Counter Intelligence.”
“Aren’t you funny?” I replied.
He was talking about John, Whitley and I having coffee every morning together sitting at the counter. We’re an odd bunch. Whitley is to the far right of Attila the Hun. John is the real life Steven Cobert. I’m the liberal though Whitley disputes that but I never understand any of his reasoning about anything.
Every single day they want to discuss politics and how screwed up everything is.
They have the right answers to everything but choose not to share them with anybody … except for me.
I beg them not too but they do anyway. For the most part, I ignore everything they say.
For example today’s topic was what’s wrong with grocery stores. You show up to the same grocery every week knowing exactly where everything is until one day … it’s been moved. The Campbell’s soup is not where it was last week. Dixie Crystal sugar isn’t either. And what in the hell happened to the wine?
Upon further investigation Campbell Soup is now on the left side of the aisle and not the right. The sugar is on the bottom shelf instead of at eye level. They both burst into tears when they found the wine is now beside the beer rather than across from it.
Of course this is President Obama’s fault.
And the liberal Media like the Savannah Morning News which they refuse to read.
Then John is approached by one of the supervisors at Publix and demands to know why the world is coming to end because everything had been moved?
She explains the marketing team told them to move things around so that shoppers will spend more time in the store looking for their items. They’ll likely discover new items that they simply must try. Profits will rise.
“Right,” John counters. “I knew it was President Obama fault and those damn liberals.”
I stare at them in disbelief.
“Alright,” I reply “let’s talk about your boy Mitch McConnell. Yesterday he said ‘No more borrowing until we cut spending’ which I assume means once they cut spending they borrow more money.”
“We didn’t see that,” they exclaim. “It wasn’t on FOX News.”
Then they leave, I linger in an attempt to recapture logical thinking … which is challenging in that environment.
I am a very positive person with an optimistic view of most everything ... to a fault my friend Tracy Thompson once told me. “You give everybody the benefit of the doubt,” she chided me. “You’re gonna get screwed because of it.”
She was right but … I remain who I am ... a very positive person … with an optimistic view of most everything and …I do indeed give everybody the benefit of the doubt. I think that things work out for the best in spite of how hard and hurtful the journey can be. “Believe it and it will come true,” sings Jimmy Buffett and as usual he’s right on.
“Yep,” remains my mantra.
It’s all going to work out as it should in spite of the very difficult roads of loss, uncertainty, missed chances and people who ended up screwing me … when I wasn’t screwing myself.
Yesterday was a crazy day. I worked. I played. I was bored because I wanted more work but couldn’t make things line up right. People who were supposed to call didn’t. My Mom even yelled at me.
Then the night ended up being … glorious.
I stayed up very late which is so out of my norm and turned the television on (also very out of the norm unless it’s college football season) and Jay Leno was interviewing Steven Tyler of Aerosmith (though apparently he’s doing something else now).
“You did a lot of drugs,” Leno says. “You write about that pretty honestly. How does that make you feel?”
Steven Tyler, who remains one of the coolest guys ever born, nonchalantly looks at Leno and answers.
“Hey I wouldn’t be me now if I hadn’t done all that stuff. It all worked out. It’s good.”
“Yep,” I said out loud.
Then I went to bed and slept like a baby.
