The Angels lost. It was shaping up to be that kind of year. In my later life, I’d recognize it as a phenomenon known as “regression to the mean”—in plain English, if you typically miss the playoffs, then it shouldn’t be so surprising when you miss the playoffs the year after winning the World Series. But in the moment it’s hard to recognize it, especially when your team wins it all the year you graduate high school and leave home. At the time, it simply looked like a dynasty evaporating before my eyes.
I slept until 10. Mike had already left to supervise the skate park, and his folks and siblings were off for their days, so I plugged in and ran through some scales before practicing the repertoire at full volume without embarrassment. I smoked a bowl at 11, played around with some new progressions, and before I knew it, my alarm was telling me I had to shower up and don the smock.
I made it to the 24-Mart at 1:55, according to the Prelude’s dash clock.
“You’re late!” snarled Ron, thrusting a box of green Slushee concentrate into my arms as the door chimed, marking my entrance. “The Hulk is out! Change it!”
“Hi Ron, nice to see you this afternoon,” I grumbled in reply, trudging toward the room housing the bag-in-box system.
“Dallas! I’m off for the afternoon!” yelled Ron. “Make sure Hank restocks the cooler!”
Dallas offered a non-English reply from the register. The door chimed. I unhooked the cashed green syrup bag and attached the fresh one to its proper hose. Product placement was alive and well again.
The store was empty, and Dallas was flipping through a Maxim at the register. It looked like Ron had made him mop and tidy up in the last hour, so I ignored him and went straight to the cooler. The shelves were in what I could only imagine was pre-hurricane condition, so I figured I had at least an hour alone with my thoughts in the solitude of the cooler.
I started on the dairy section. Five minutes in, the difference in temperature from outside to the cooler got to me, and I dropped a gallon of milk.
“Fuck!” I yelled. “Fucking gallon of cowpiss!”
I left the cooler, walked past the register, and grabbed one of the mops and the write-off gun.
“What’s going on?” asked Dallas, barely looking up from his Maxim.
“Uh, sticky floor for starters,” I said. “Looks like no one’s mopped back there for a while. And there’s a couple old gallons of milk.”
“Huh,” he said, turning the page. The door chimed. Five kids ran into the store toward the Slushee machine, followed by a haggard-looking dad.
“Good luck with that,” I said, pushing the mop into the cooler, away from the masses.
I started mopping up the milk, which had pooled around the floor to create what looked like an alien crime scene. I’d never realized the true volume of a gallon. It took a whole five minutes to sop it up and make sure the floor wasn’t going to turn to cheese. When I finished, I scanned the barcode on the devastated jug with the write-off gun so that Ron wouldn’t blow a gasket.
I left the cooler and went to return the write-off gun, but stopped in my tracks as I turned the corner back into the store. Children were shrieking and the Hulk Slushee spigot was spewing a steady stream of lime-green nightmare onto the floor. Dallas slipped in the mess, scrambling from a toppled beef jerky display in a vain attempt to prevent the worst. The door chimed.
“What the shit, guys!” the dad bellowed. “I leave you in here for two minutes to fill the tank and this?”
I slowly and deliberately retreated back to the cooler. I grabbed another gallon of milk and dropped it from shoulder length, watching as it burst on the ground.
Predictably, within ten seconds, Dallas burst through the cooler door.
“Hey, uh, can you mop up at the Slushee machine?” he asked, too casually.
“I would, but my hands froze up and I dropped some milk,” I replied. “I’m kind of in the middle of it here, trying to contain this. The other mop is back by the office though.”
Dallas limped off, grumbling to himself. I smirked as I returned to my self-made mess. Let that goofus deal with the monster children, I thought.
I settled into the zen of stocking the cooler. The Budweisers and Coors Lights would be flying off the shelves within a couple of hours, when the construction crews let out for the day. I made a point to get the tall boys and forties ready for them before moving on to the bigger packs and the non-alcoholic stock. I managed to stay in the cooler until 3:15.
“Shit man, what took you so long?” groused Dallas, as soon as I turned the corner back into the store. He’d moved on from Maxim to FHM.
“It was fuckin’ empty back there dude!” I threw back.
“Okay, okay. Jeez. Go take a smoke break or something, then I can take a break.”
Dallas’s “breaks” usually consisted of 1-2 hour excursions away from the 24-Mart, on the clock. I expected that I’d be alone for a while, and I wasn’t feeling especially sad about losing his company.
“Fine, ring me up for a pack of D’Jarum Browns, then.”
“Why do you smoke those gross things anyway? Don’t they put Styrofoam into your lungs?” he asked.
“Because they taste good when you don’t inhale and they give me a reason to take a ten minute break from your stepdad,” I said, stone-faced, handing over my debit card.
Dallas laughed and put his finger over the tiny microphone near the register. “I hear that,” he said. “Ron’s a real piece of work.”
He handed me my pack. “Now go smoke that shit so I can get out of here!” he laughed, before pulling his finger off the microphone.
I spent ten minutes crouching under the overhang behind the store, enjoying every second of clove-tinged bliss away from the store. I figured Dallas would be gone until five or so, back just in time to oversee the evening resupply from the mothership.
The afternoon passed predictably. Millie dropped in, daughter in tow, and opted for the fifth pack of Marlboro Lights from the bottom. The day laborers came in for their shitty beer, scratchers, and phone cards. A few tweakers came out of the woodwork for caffeine and cigarettes. Even Mike stopped in between his shift at the skate park and the evening games he was reffing.
“I’ve got eight-year-olds at five and ten-year-olds at six,” he said, poking at his Slushee. “I’ll bring you a burrito at like 7:30 if you want.”
“Nah, thanks, I’m trying to save money and a burrito’s like 45 minutes of this shit,” I said, gesturing around the 24-Mart. “I’ll just forage from your folks’ fridge as long as your mom doesn’t mind me eating the leftovers again.”
“Are you kidding?” said Mike. “She likes you a lot better than me. She’s always talking about how she wishes you weren’t gone so much during the school year.” He swirled his straw around in the Slushee and took a sip. “And anyway, Sarah’s doing that dumb South Beach Diet, so I’m pretty sure you can have her portion of whatever casserole mom’s making.”
“Cool,” I said absentmindedly. “Then we can head to Johnny’s?”
“Yeah, sure,” he replied. “Maybe we can try to keep it on the shorter side tonight? I have another early morning at the skatepark tomorrow.”
“Dude, really? I thought you made it a point to not have to work tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, I did, but Kelsey bailed. I had to take the shift so I could get off for Saturday.”
The door chimed. A young couple I’d never seen stepped in and looked around before heading to the snack aisle. They looked like hippies, and by my guess, they were spending their summer traveling the Pacific coast. He was wearing a vintage Crater Lake tee, wire-rimmed glasses, and a tattered baseball cap over his shaggy hair. She was wearing a radiant floral dress. They proceeded to collect about $20 worth of snacks and drinks into one of our few shopping baskets.
“OK, OK,” I said. “We’ll try to wrap up by 11.” The couple approached the counter. I rang them up for their road trip fuel and she paid in cash before they left the shop. The door chimed.
“Cool man, thanks, I appreciate it,” said Mike. “This way we have all Saturday to set up for the party.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.” I said absentmindedly, thinking of everything we had to do to get ready for our house show in three days—to say nothing of actually planning the party to get people to show up.
Mike seemed to sense my shift in mood. “Well, I think I’m gonna go get ready to deal with the little shits,” he said. “Good luck with the rest of your shift. And thanks for letting me weeze the juice!”
“Weeze the juice!” I replied, doing my best Brendan Fraser.
“Weezin’ the ju-uice,” he came back, in his best Pauly Shore, while walking out. The door chimed.
The 24-Mart was quiet once again. I took a minute to investigate the cigarette rack and restocked the depleted stores. For whatever reason—more likely than not, Dallas’s inattentiveness—the stacks were low and there were unopened cartons to file. I was contemplating the likely difference between Kool Filters and Kool Milds when the door chimed again.
I looked up. The hippie dude was shuffling back up to the counter. “Hey man,” he started, “I put my card in Pump 3 before we came in, and it timed out. Can you restart it for me?”
“Oh, sure,” I said, still thinking about my cigarette project and Saturday’s party. “You guys don’t look like you’re from around here,” I said. “Seeing California?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “We’re from Washington. Drove down to San Diego for Comic Con and now we’re taking the long way back. Gonna try to get up to friends in Venice tonight.”
“Shouldn’t take you much time,” I said. “Venice is a trip, but if you’re heading north, make sure to stop to see the beaches at Malibu and Rincon.”
“We’re planning to see Malibu. What’s Rincon?”
“It’s a point at the border of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Waves peel off it for miles. Lots of surfers, great for taking photos.”
“Cool man. We’ll have to stop there on our way to Big Sur. Thanks!”
“Yeah, no problem,” I responded. The door chimed.
Practice was that night actually took my edge off a bit, regarding Saturday. Johnny’s SG actually held its tune, I felt good in my voice, and most importantly, Mike finally seemed somewhat confident hanging in the pocket with Animal. Given how good I felt going to bed on Wednesday night, I should have expected some regression to the mean come Thursday morning.
Mike was long gone to the skate park by the time I got up. I was scheduled for an 11-4 shift and made it a point to get to the 24-Mart fifteen minutes early after the prior day’s lack of concordance between my clock and Ron’s.
“You know I’m not paying you for these fifteen minutes you’re early, right?” Ron greeted me in the parking lot.
“Oh, huh, I guess I am early,” I replied, looking at my bare wrist. “I thought I was right on time.”
“Time for you to get a watch,” said Ron, missing my sarcasm entirely. “And while you’re here early, come on back to the office. I have some video I want to show you.”
My amygdala was sending warning signs rattling throughout my skull, but my curiosity was piqued. And I guess I didn’t really have much choice. I followed Ron back to his shabby office. He heaved himself down onto his typist’s chair, the poor piece protesting under what I suspected was twice its maximum weight. He pulled up store footage from the previous afternoon and began scrubbing through it. I suppressed a laugh as I watched Dallas wipe out on the Slushee disaster, then saw Millie, the day laborers, and Mike all come and go. Then Ron pressed play. The hippie dude rolled into the store, and the door chimed on the video.
“Hey man,” the guy said, “I put my card in Pump 3 before we came in, and it timed out. Can you restart it for me?”
“Oh, sure,” I heard myself say. “You guys don’t look like you’re from around here. Seeing California?”
Ron stopped the tape. “Want to tell me what you did wrong?” he asked.
“Uh…” I started, wracking my brain.
“Here’s a hint,” started Ron. “I looked at the video because I didn’t know why my gas receipts were off by $10.17.”
“Oh no,” I said, slapping my forehead and realizing my mistake. “I should have just told him to put his card back in the machine.”
“That’s right!” said Ron triumphantly. “Congratulations. You just bought yourself ten dollars worth of gas.”
“Technically, I think I bought those two hippies ten dollars worth of gas,” I replied.
“You think you’re so goddamn smart, but you have no idea how stupid you are,” snarled Ron.
“Are we done?” I asked. “You’ve docked my pay, so it seems like we’re even.”
“We won’t be done until you stop making mistakes like this,” Ron threw back, his face reddening. “Nelson vouches for you, but you’re on thin ice.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, throwing my hands up. “I get the point. I never worked at a gas station until our pumps got up and running last week, so I sincerely apologize and ask that you bear with me while I learn the ropes.”
Ron grumbled something unintelligible and looked back at his computer, closing the security footage and opening up a blank spreadsheet. I waited a few seconds before he looked back at me.
“Well? What are you waiting for? Go stock the cooler!”
“Sure thing, boss,” I said, a million other replies running through my steam of consciousness. I left the office and crossed the store, seeing Dallas smirking while pretending to flip through a Sports Illustrated at the counter. I slammed the door to the cooler and grabbed a Mickey’s 40, hurling it directly at the ground. It smashed into a hundred little pieces, cheap malt liquor spreading across the floor.
“Fuck!” I shouted. “Fucking piece of shit fat fuck!” I threw two middle fingers up at the camera in the cooler, knowing full well that the lack of sound (and my later writing off of that 40) would prevent Ron from ever seeing it.
Ten minutes on the internet that night confirmed my prior suspicion: Ron’s docking my pay for my honest error was baldly illegal. I also knew that suing him over ten $10.17 was a fool’s errand.
I had a revelation when I went back to college that September. In the heat of that moment in July, I was so mad at Ron that I failed to see the broader context of the injustice. Looking back, I figured I would have spent that $10.17 at a record store, a taco shop, or on guitar gear. It sucked, but the personal consequences weren’t dire. But what if it’d been Molly or Esme? That $10.17 could have affected whether their kids had what they needed to go back to school, or even whether they could put dinner on the table that night. The more I’ve thought about it over the years, the more I’ve wondered how much damage Ron had caused in other people’s lives, damage that he never considered. It was a fucked up world, I was learning, with a marketplace far less congenial than the one preached to us in senior year economics class. We were still far more like The Jungle than Utopia, even if I was selling the prospect of becoming an overnight millionaire.
I slept until 10. Mike had already left to supervise the skate park, and his folks and siblings were off for their days, so I plugged in and ran through some scales before practicing the repertoire at full volume without embarrassment. I smoked a bowl at 11, played around with some new progressions, and before I knew it, my alarm was telling me I had to shower up and don the smock.
I made it to the 24-Mart at 1:55, according to the Prelude’s dash clock.
“You’re late!” snarled Ron, thrusting a box of green Slushee concentrate into my arms as the door chimed, marking my entrance. “The Hulk is out! Change it!”
“Hi Ron, nice to see you this afternoon,” I grumbled in reply, trudging toward the room housing the bag-in-box system.
“Dallas! I’m off for the afternoon!” yelled Ron. “Make sure Hank restocks the cooler!”
Dallas offered a non-English reply from the register. The door chimed. I unhooked the cashed green syrup bag and attached the fresh one to its proper hose. Product placement was alive and well again.
The store was empty, and Dallas was flipping through a Maxim at the register. It looked like Ron had made him mop and tidy up in the last hour, so I ignored him and went straight to the cooler. The shelves were in what I could only imagine was pre-hurricane condition, so I figured I had at least an hour alone with my thoughts in the solitude of the cooler.
I started on the dairy section. Five minutes in, the difference in temperature from outside to the cooler got to me, and I dropped a gallon of milk.
“Fuck!” I yelled. “Fucking gallon of cowpiss!”
I left the cooler, walked past the register, and grabbed one of the mops and the write-off gun.
“What’s going on?” asked Dallas, barely looking up from his Maxim.
“Uh, sticky floor for starters,” I said. “Looks like no one’s mopped back there for a while. And there’s a couple old gallons of milk.”
“Huh,” he said, turning the page. The door chimed. Five kids ran into the store toward the Slushee machine, followed by a haggard-looking dad.
“Good luck with that,” I said, pushing the mop into the cooler, away from the masses.
I started mopping up the milk, which had pooled around the floor to create what looked like an alien crime scene. I’d never realized the true volume of a gallon. It took a whole five minutes to sop it up and make sure the floor wasn’t going to turn to cheese. When I finished, I scanned the barcode on the devastated jug with the write-off gun so that Ron wouldn’t blow a gasket.
I left the cooler and went to return the write-off gun, but stopped in my tracks as I turned the corner back into the store. Children were shrieking and the Hulk Slushee spigot was spewing a steady stream of lime-green nightmare onto the floor. Dallas slipped in the mess, scrambling from a toppled beef jerky display in a vain attempt to prevent the worst. The door chimed.
“What the shit, guys!” the dad bellowed. “I leave you in here for two minutes to fill the tank and this?”
I slowly and deliberately retreated back to the cooler. I grabbed another gallon of milk and dropped it from shoulder length, watching as it burst on the ground.
Predictably, within ten seconds, Dallas burst through the cooler door.
“Hey, uh, can you mop up at the Slushee machine?” he asked, too casually.
“I would, but my hands froze up and I dropped some milk,” I replied. “I’m kind of in the middle of it here, trying to contain this. The other mop is back by the office though.”
Dallas limped off, grumbling to himself. I smirked as I returned to my self-made mess. Let that goofus deal with the monster children, I thought.
I settled into the zen of stocking the cooler. The Budweisers and Coors Lights would be flying off the shelves within a couple of hours, when the construction crews let out for the day. I made a point to get the tall boys and forties ready for them before moving on to the bigger packs and the non-alcoholic stock. I managed to stay in the cooler until 3:15.
“Shit man, what took you so long?” groused Dallas, as soon as I turned the corner back into the store. He’d moved on from Maxim to FHM.
“It was fuckin’ empty back there dude!” I threw back.
“Okay, okay. Jeez. Go take a smoke break or something, then I can take a break.”
Dallas’s “breaks” usually consisted of 1-2 hour excursions away from the 24-Mart, on the clock. I expected that I’d be alone for a while, and I wasn’t feeling especially sad about losing his company.
“Fine, ring me up for a pack of D’Jarum Browns, then.”
“Why do you smoke those gross things anyway? Don’t they put Styrofoam into your lungs?” he asked.
“Because they taste good when you don’t inhale and they give me a reason to take a ten minute break from your stepdad,” I said, stone-faced, handing over my debit card.
Dallas laughed and put his finger over the tiny microphone near the register. “I hear that,” he said. “Ron’s a real piece of work.”
He handed me my pack. “Now go smoke that shit so I can get out of here!” he laughed, before pulling his finger off the microphone.
I spent ten minutes crouching under the overhang behind the store, enjoying every second of clove-tinged bliss away from the store. I figured Dallas would be gone until five or so, back just in time to oversee the evening resupply from the mothership.
The afternoon passed predictably. Millie dropped in, daughter in tow, and opted for the fifth pack of Marlboro Lights from the bottom. The day laborers came in for their shitty beer, scratchers, and phone cards. A few tweakers came out of the woodwork for caffeine and cigarettes. Even Mike stopped in between his shift at the skate park and the evening games he was reffing.
“I’ve got eight-year-olds at five and ten-year-olds at six,” he said, poking at his Slushee. “I’ll bring you a burrito at like 7:30 if you want.”
“Nah, thanks, I’m trying to save money and a burrito’s like 45 minutes of this shit,” I said, gesturing around the 24-Mart. “I’ll just forage from your folks’ fridge as long as your mom doesn’t mind me eating the leftovers again.”
“Are you kidding?” said Mike. “She likes you a lot better than me. She’s always talking about how she wishes you weren’t gone so much during the school year.” He swirled his straw around in the Slushee and took a sip. “And anyway, Sarah’s doing that dumb South Beach Diet, so I’m pretty sure you can have her portion of whatever casserole mom’s making.”
“Cool,” I said absentmindedly. “Then we can head to Johnny’s?”
“Yeah, sure,” he replied. “Maybe we can try to keep it on the shorter side tonight? I have another early morning at the skatepark tomorrow.”
“Dude, really? I thought you made it a point to not have to work tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, I did, but Kelsey bailed. I had to take the shift so I could get off for Saturday.”
The door chimed. A young couple I’d never seen stepped in and looked around before heading to the snack aisle. They looked like hippies, and by my guess, they were spending their summer traveling the Pacific coast. He was wearing a vintage Crater Lake tee, wire-rimmed glasses, and a tattered baseball cap over his shaggy hair. She was wearing a radiant floral dress. They proceeded to collect about $20 worth of snacks and drinks into one of our few shopping baskets.
“OK, OK,” I said. “We’ll try to wrap up by 11.” The couple approached the counter. I rang them up for their road trip fuel and she paid in cash before they left the shop. The door chimed.
“Cool man, thanks, I appreciate it,” said Mike. “This way we have all Saturday to set up for the party.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.” I said absentmindedly, thinking of everything we had to do to get ready for our house show in three days—to say nothing of actually planning the party to get people to show up.
Mike seemed to sense my shift in mood. “Well, I think I’m gonna go get ready to deal with the little shits,” he said. “Good luck with the rest of your shift. And thanks for letting me weeze the juice!”
“Weeze the juice!” I replied, doing my best Brendan Fraser.
“Weezin’ the ju-uice,” he came back, in his best Pauly Shore, while walking out. The door chimed.
The 24-Mart was quiet once again. I took a minute to investigate the cigarette rack and restocked the depleted stores. For whatever reason—more likely than not, Dallas’s inattentiveness—the stacks were low and there were unopened cartons to file. I was contemplating the likely difference between Kool Filters and Kool Milds when the door chimed again.
I looked up. The hippie dude was shuffling back up to the counter. “Hey man,” he started, “I put my card in Pump 3 before we came in, and it timed out. Can you restart it for me?”
“Oh, sure,” I said, still thinking about my cigarette project and Saturday’s party. “You guys don’t look like you’re from around here,” I said. “Seeing California?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “We’re from Washington. Drove down to San Diego for Comic Con and now we’re taking the long way back. Gonna try to get up to friends in Venice tonight.”
“Shouldn’t take you much time,” I said. “Venice is a trip, but if you’re heading north, make sure to stop to see the beaches at Malibu and Rincon.”
“We’re planning to see Malibu. What’s Rincon?”
“It’s a point at the border of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Waves peel off it for miles. Lots of surfers, great for taking photos.”
“Cool man. We’ll have to stop there on our way to Big Sur. Thanks!”
“Yeah, no problem,” I responded. The door chimed.
Practice was that night actually took my edge off a bit, regarding Saturday. Johnny’s SG actually held its tune, I felt good in my voice, and most importantly, Mike finally seemed somewhat confident hanging in the pocket with Animal. Given how good I felt going to bed on Wednesday night, I should have expected some regression to the mean come Thursday morning.
Mike was long gone to the skate park by the time I got up. I was scheduled for an 11-4 shift and made it a point to get to the 24-Mart fifteen minutes early after the prior day’s lack of concordance between my clock and Ron’s.
“You know I’m not paying you for these fifteen minutes you’re early, right?” Ron greeted me in the parking lot.
“Oh, huh, I guess I am early,” I replied, looking at my bare wrist. “I thought I was right on time.”
“Time for you to get a watch,” said Ron, missing my sarcasm entirely. “And while you’re here early, come on back to the office. I have some video I want to show you.”
My amygdala was sending warning signs rattling throughout my skull, but my curiosity was piqued. And I guess I didn’t really have much choice. I followed Ron back to his shabby office. He heaved himself down onto his typist’s chair, the poor piece protesting under what I suspected was twice its maximum weight. He pulled up store footage from the previous afternoon and began scrubbing through it. I suppressed a laugh as I watched Dallas wipe out on the Slushee disaster, then saw Millie, the day laborers, and Mike all come and go. Then Ron pressed play. The hippie dude rolled into the store, and the door chimed on the video.
“Hey man,” the guy said, “I put my card in Pump 3 before we came in, and it timed out. Can you restart it for me?”
“Oh, sure,” I heard myself say. “You guys don’t look like you’re from around here. Seeing California?”
Ron stopped the tape. “Want to tell me what you did wrong?” he asked.
“Uh…” I started, wracking my brain.
“Here’s a hint,” started Ron. “I looked at the video because I didn’t know why my gas receipts were off by $10.17.”
“Oh no,” I said, slapping my forehead and realizing my mistake. “I should have just told him to put his card back in the machine.”
“That’s right!” said Ron triumphantly. “Congratulations. You just bought yourself ten dollars worth of gas.”
“Technically, I think I bought those two hippies ten dollars worth of gas,” I replied.
“You think you’re so goddamn smart, but you have no idea how stupid you are,” snarled Ron.
“Are we done?” I asked. “You’ve docked my pay, so it seems like we’re even.”
“We won’t be done until you stop making mistakes like this,” Ron threw back, his face reddening. “Nelson vouches for you, but you’re on thin ice.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, throwing my hands up. “I get the point. I never worked at a gas station until our pumps got up and running last week, so I sincerely apologize and ask that you bear with me while I learn the ropes.”
Ron grumbled something unintelligible and looked back at his computer, closing the security footage and opening up a blank spreadsheet. I waited a few seconds before he looked back at me.
“Well? What are you waiting for? Go stock the cooler!”
“Sure thing, boss,” I said, a million other replies running through my steam of consciousness. I left the office and crossed the store, seeing Dallas smirking while pretending to flip through a Sports Illustrated at the counter. I slammed the door to the cooler and grabbed a Mickey’s 40, hurling it directly at the ground. It smashed into a hundred little pieces, cheap malt liquor spreading across the floor.
“Fuck!” I shouted. “Fucking piece of shit fat fuck!” I threw two middle fingers up at the camera in the cooler, knowing full well that the lack of sound (and my later writing off of that 40) would prevent Ron from ever seeing it.
Ten minutes on the internet that night confirmed my prior suspicion: Ron’s docking my pay for my honest error was baldly illegal. I also knew that suing him over ten $10.17 was a fool’s errand.
I had a revelation when I went back to college that September. In the heat of that moment in July, I was so mad at Ron that I failed to see the broader context of the injustice. Looking back, I figured I would have spent that $10.17 at a record store, a taco shop, or on guitar gear. It sucked, but the personal consequences weren’t dire. But what if it’d been Molly or Esme? That $10.17 could have affected whether their kids had what they needed to go back to school, or even whether they could put dinner on the table that night. The more I’ve thought about it over the years, the more I’ve wondered how much damage Ron had caused in other people’s lives, damage that he never considered. It was a fucked up world, I was learning, with a marketplace far less congenial than the one preached to us in senior year economics class. We were still far more like The Jungle than Utopia, even if I was selling the prospect of becoming an overnight millionaire.
