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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, October 13
The Wife and I went to a pumpkin patch deal they had a local park this afternoon…I asked The Wife exactly what in the hell a pumpkin patch was and she said there would be corn dogs…Not might be corn dogs…Not should be or could be corn dogs, there would be corn dogs, so I went in good spirits.
She lied…There were no corn dogs there…There were some pumpkin activities for the kids…Walk thru a maze and get a pumpkin…Roll a pumpkin at some pins and knock them down, tho this was hard for the really young ones, easier for the dads…Run around and fall on a pumpkin…There were some tables with sweets, mostly store-bought, and some keto stuff, which apparently is really healthy because they were asking, and apparently not getting, $5 for a cup of keto coffee…No corn dogs.
Still tho, it was an overcast, cool and windy autumn day, kind of nice actually, and we took advantage of the walking trail…Afterward, we went and checked the mail then went to the market where The Wife got some veggies and some grapeseed oil and I got a couple of loaves of their house brand rye bread, which is really good, as good a leading national brand…I got two because usually, I’ll get bread if I’m at the retailer and so we have an extra when the first loaf runs out…There was nothing interesting in the mail.
Very slow at the retailer, slow enough that Buzz and I were able to spend considerable time chatting…One time we were talking about this couple where the gentleman was plainly older than his wife…Or maybe it was the girl he was having an affair with, I don’t know…Anyway, Buzz and I concluded he was 10-15 years older than his wife, which isn’t too bad, and I noted that was more or less the age difference between Pa Sparrow and my mom and that Pa Sparrow liked them young…The classic Sparrow pause before tilting my head and looking at Buzz:
Who doesn’t, really???
This made Buzz laff…All right, maybe it’s not a Line of the Year candidate, but still it was pretty funny for two middle-aged men.
Speaking of Line of the Year candidates, I got off one of my traditionals today…There’s an older gentleman wandering around, plainly looking for something, so I ask if I can help him find it and he says no, he is looking for his wife, so I extend an arm towards the service desk and I don’t even bother with the classic Sparrow pause:
You want us to check lost and found???…Maybe somebody’s turned her in???
Now, this got the usual chuckle from the gentleman and got a big laff from Supervisor Maria who laffs at this line every single time!!!…I am not making that up!!!…She hears it 17 times a week and she always loves it.
Then this guy called wondering about tire chains…He’s visiting and he heard it might snow overnight and he must be from the Gobi Desert or something because snow won’t really start sticking for a while yet…I told him this, but he insisted on asking me questions like I was the host of Tire Chain Talk…How many in a package???…Front or rear???…Are they easy to put on???…Does one size fit all???…Hell, I don’t know…I told him we had a pretty decent selection and to come on in and we’d find someone smarter than me to answer his questions.
Long-time readers of this crap will recall my triumphant stint working for the Doily Delivery Company…Our trucks had automatic tire chains…You flip a switch and chains lowered in front of the rear traction tires and swirled around clearing a path…This did your front steerage tires some zero good, but as I recall they worked rather well.
Towards the end of the shift, this guy comes up with a speaker he wanted to exchange…He said the charger wasn’t charging or something and he wanted to exchange it and the receipt was in the box…OK, I tell him and he and a buddy trot off because they have nothing better to do on Saturday night than return a defective speaker and buy Junior Mints…I open the box and look at the receipt and he bought it in August and retailer policy is very clear on the matter: no returns on electronic items after 15 days…Now, he bought the warranty so they’ll send him the new one and, unlike some other customers, he took this well, and I commended him having the foresight to both buy the warranty and keep the receipt.
We had a barking dog at the hotel…Puja had warned me about this and about 2320 I get a call from a guest saying Fido had started up again…You could actually hear him barking heading up the stairs, which is down the hall from the room, which means both the dog is barking pretty loudly and our walls are wafer thin…People, listen…Yeah, it’s nice when hotels allow pets but we are not a kennel and it is not reasonable to leave your dog unattended…I was at the room staring at the door crossly when another guest called and I head back down and get the guest’s cell number and leave a message and later I get the brilliant idea of texting him from my phone and this time I threaten to call animal control and I called him a minute later and this time he picked right up and said he was on the way in to take care of this and it was all cleared up by midnight.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: The Sleep Log will return next week, when we are back to the regular odd sleeping schedule.
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
It was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.
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