Walkabout. Sprouts. (the first walkabout)
The cashier is waxing on about the economy and the bail out and how the people who didn't have to borrow have to bail out the morons who over borrowed like she is Karl Marx. I mumble it's everyone's fault because I just read this nostalgic post about the fifties and how our mom's just put Mercurochrome on our cuts rather than taking us to urgent care along with a prescription for two weeks of antibiotics and how when we were little no one was in debt to their eyeballs but they ignore me. Then the freaky looking customer in the tattered sweater in front of me is short on her bill and she turns wide eyed and asks me if I have fifty cents. I look at her dumbfounded. I get spare changed all the time, even hookers hit me up in the parking lot at Home Depot. I smart ass back that it's just like the banks and everyone has to have a loan and she gets all skittery and says that it's okay she doesn't need the money but I realize she's a little odd, maybe crazy, so I say no it's cool and give her fifty cents. She says God bless you and digs into her pocket and hands me a stone. It's a worry stone, she says, I have another one and God told me to give it to you. I thank her, pay my bill without making the guy behind me bail me out and on the way out of the store I grab one of those sanitary wet wipes so I can sterilize my hands and the worry stone so I won't have to worry about catching anything and gong on antibiotics. I car up and slide out of the parking lot and slip the cd I just bought at Bookman's for the cover into the player and as I head north the sounds of a new age Yanni overdubbed by Barry White confuse me and make me long even more for the good old days when I didn't have anything to worry about.