7

found:
at work this morning mike the 'token half-retard' was teased by tyrone about the fact that he’s never had a girlfriend (i've been told he's in his thirties), although he comes in all the time and tells us about biker babes he’s dating. no one believes him for some reason. but one day he came in and said his biker babe girlfriend's dad told him he couldn't see his daughter anymore, and this plot thickening seemed oddly creative and maybe true after all. we asked him why her dad didn't approve of the relationship, and he said, "i don't know. i think it's because i'm canadian." we told him that his biker babe girlfriend was a loser and so was her dad.
but back to the story. he protested that he’s had girlfriends, and tyrone said blow up dolls don’t count as girlfriends. tyrone is missing his two front teeth. he grabbed R- and another lady as examples of “what a real woman looks like.” I was not one of the examples, and it was infinitely better that way. I laughed. that tyrone, I thought. he’s full of shit. then I skipped my second class to make stirfry. I found a perfectly good hat on the ground. most of the hats I own have been found on the ground. it is abnormally warm out.

i did go to my first class: smooth sailing. my French pronunciation is getting better. I took the tunnel between herter and Bartlett, and upon entering Bartlett I bypassed the boiler room, or some other room where maintenance work is done, apparently, because there was a paper on the door that just said this:

JIM SCHAFER
STOP
JOB CANCELLED
DO NOT ENTER
CALL
PAM IF YOU NEED MORE
CLARITY

that put a slight damper on things. I pictured poor Jim Schafer venturing into the bowels of Bartlett to do some shitty maintenance job and being met with this cold (and yet oddly poetic) note. mostly I pictured jim schafer needing more clarity.

I went downtown to get some toothpaste and pick up a prescription. I waited in the small designated wait area while there was some issue with my insurance. homeless bill murray was sitting two seats next to me, and he was eating peanuts and throwing the shells into the seat between us. he was drinking orange juice too. when he finished his orange juice he got up, walked over to the drinks and got a new one. he didn’t pay for it. I was wondering how cvs permitted him to do this, but then he got up, cleaned off the peanut shell chair, and went over to the pharmacy counter to pick up the entire stock of travel sized tissue packets that a young girl wearing a umass sweatshirt had knocked onto the floor when she swung her coach bag onto the small red counter. i specify that it was a coach bag because this makes the accident and its inconvenience to homeless bill murray infinitely more deplorable. the pharmacy technician thanked him by name, and I realized that homeless bill murray was an undercover cvs employee, paid under the table with peanuts and orange juice. when he had collected all the tissue packets, he rose from the floor with some difficulty, only to have the box slip from his grip. the tissues were all over the floor again. I was going to help him pick them up but I read a pamphlet on type two diabetes instead. in retrospect, it was not the right thing to do. there was a photograph of a woman and a man on a dock on the cover, their legs dangling in the water. they were holding lemonades and smiling, and their party barge, which they were free to enjoy since their diabetes was under control, was parked next to them. then I read a pamphlet called “teens & couch medicine abuse.” there was an adolescent girl on the cover with long, straight, dark hair, and heavy black eyeliner. she looked like she just didn’t care. she was robo-tripping. inside the pamphlet I learned how to detect whether my teen is abusing cough syrup recreationally. symptoms of excessive robotripping include apathy and decreased performance in school. i felt cheated. i was apathetic about school and i wasn't robotripping. homeless bill murray picked up the tissues, with success this time, and then returned to his seat to resume shucking peanut shells. my insurance issue was unresolved, and I was told to come back tomorrow. on my way out, I passed by a stack of one subject notebooks on a shelf. a yellow tag hanging from the shelf read: ONE SUBJECT NOTEBOOKS 4.49 WOW!