Chapter One: Flatulent Children And Husbands Who Have Died

"Excuse me?" the child seemed to ask.

"Yes, darling?" I replied with my trademark bubbly cheer.

"Excuse me?" the child repeated.

"Yes, you have my attention!  What's up?" I pressed.

"Excuse me?"

"Yes?"

"I tooted."

And here we were, another day here at the Nifty Thrifty Thrift Shop, right here in Cow Shit Farms, Maryland, a small town thus named for the fact that the smell of cow shit farms, farms at which the only crop appears to be cow shit if one's nose is to be believed.  It's been a few months now since I began my job here, a cashier at a second hand store, and actually a rather large and well kept one if I may take such pride in my place of employment.  As the head cashier here, I'm responsible for over one hundred transactions a day, on a good day.  I'm at my cash register for twelve hours, open to close.  Not to brag, of course.

The next customer approached.  She was an older young lady.  Not ancient, just older.  Her cart was filled with Barbie dolls and stuffed animals depicting bunny rabbits in people clothes.  I had been told minutes before by my boss that she was coming, not for any personal reason about her, but simply because she had such a great number of Barbie dolls in her cart that I was told to enter them manually, to charge merely a dollar for each, rather than the two dollars at which they had been marked to sell.  I rang up the woman's purchases, making small talk as I do.  It is always lovely to see stuffed animals depicting rabbits in people clothes, of course, and anyone who doesn't agree with that is wrong.  I asked also about the great number of Barbie dolls which she was purchasing.

"They're for my niece," she told me.

"Oh, very nice!  How old is she?"

I've basically written a script for myself, you see.  Customers constantly tell me they're purchasing clothes for a new child, or decorating for a wedding, or having a themed day at their office, or having an Ugly Sweater Christmas Party as though they were the first to ever think of such a thing.  I have preprogramed responses for each of these things.  But this woman wasn't following her lines.

"I just lost my husband," she hit me with a sentence missile.

I automatically hugged her, and she cried into my shoulder.  This had taken a turn away from how adorable the stuffed animals depicting bunny rabbits in people clothes were (and they really were).

"We were together for forty-four years.  I'm lost without him."

There really isn't anything to say when someone tells you this.  You can write all the lines you want for yourself, in anticipation of what you'll be told throughout the day, but, you know, come on.  She thanked me for the hug and said it was what she needed sometimes.  I thanked her for shopping at the Nifty Thrifty Thrift Shop of Cow Shit, Maryland.

The next customer in line, of course, couldn't help but witness the conversation before.

"Wow, forty-four years," she said, "I can't even get someone to put up with me for five years."

"Oh, you were married for five years?"

"No, I've been married five times."

"Wow!  Working on number six?"

"Oh, shit, no!  Never again.  My last one, well...he fooled around, I fooled around."

"Well, hey, if you were both doing it..."

"That's what I said!

"Did you both know about it?"

"He had suspicions, I had suspicions.  He crashed two of my computers with porn so...two of them are dead.  One killed himself.  His daughter found him."

"She found him hanging?"

"Thank God, no.  He shot himself."

I rang up her purchases and she was on her way.