"One more weekend..."

Maybe all of my titles will be quotes from Dylan from now on, who can say?

Wow. My last weekend at Roadrunners. Looking back, I see years and years of Friday and Saturday nights in servitude to the man, eschewing any ambition of a normal-time social-life for the hit-and-miss life of the pizza tip, looking forward, I see a murky somethingness across the seas in Incheon which despite its ambiguity seems certain not to involve working till midnight on the weekends. What will I do with all my free time, what will it be like to have an actual weekend? Christ, I dunno...

Friday night was pretty busy but I got caught in a rut and kept getting the crappy runs. It started off reasonably well, my first delivery was to this gremlin sized guy at 410 Ranch Farm (why bother blacking out the street names? it's not like this guy reads blogs...). He always tips, and sometimes he tips well (when he's drunk) but it was still too early in the day when I got there so he only gave me 2 bucks. What was remarkable about the trip was that he had two of his buddies over with him, and one of them was this guy I'd encountered before.

I can't remember if I saw this guy at the same address, or if I saw him at his own home or somewhere else, but I'd definitely seen him before. I didn't recognize him when I looked at him, but my memory was jogged when he said to me what he'd said before:

"You got any red pepper in yow car there, boy?"

Like I said I can't remember where I've seen him, but I remember being asked this question several times over the last year or so, and it was always this jackass doing the questioning. Now, you may be thinking that that's a reasonable enough question (even though it isn't - c'mon, it's not like we delivery drivers carry around gobs of pepper and parmesan just in case someone asks for it, it's not prudent) but what makes this guy a "major league asshole," to quote the president I believe, is that he's asked me several times before and every time I respond in the negative, and when I do so he gets downright indignant with me.

On Friday he asked about the pepper and I said no, then he asks: "you got any parmesan cheese in dere?"

Seeing that this could be the beginning of an endless sequence of questions about what I do or do not carry around in my Corolla I cut him off and said "no, I've got nothing in there."

He grunted in disgust and walked away while his height-challenged friend paid me. But as I was leaving I had to pass by him and the 3rd friend and he half-grunted/half-articulated some sort of sentence that was ostensibly directed at his pal but was really directed towards me, something like "Grunt dang dern peppers in dang ol car dere, parmesan grunt grunt in the car grunt grunt dang grunt."

I just ignored him until I reached my car, but by the end there it was obvious he was trying to get a response from me because his tone kept on elevating as he approached the end of the sentence like you do when you're not sure if you want to mumble something or scream it, and then you decide halfway through...I opened the door, stood in the partition between it and the opening it created, and sized him up.

I knew I could take him if it came to that, and though a physical confrontation wasn't really something on the ol conscious-radar when guys get into confrontations that's the first thing we consider, whether we realize it or not. I also knew that it was one of my last days at work, and fuck it, I could be disrespectful to this fucking prick if I wanted to be. And maybe waynepast would have been, waynepast might have said something like "Dude if you don't shut the fuck up about the fucking red pepper I'm gonna rip that goddamn hick mustache off your face and feed it to you," but waynepresent, or, to be more accurate, wayne near-past is more mature than that, and he said only (with just a hint of sarcasm) "thanks for the advice, I'll take it under advisement" and drove away.

Another interesting delivery that night was when I went to this mailb0x-less trailer park where it's always hard to figure out which house is which. A lot of times in places like this you just have to do your best and guess, and pull in and out of driveways with your brights on until you spot the numbers on the door...and sometimes when there are no numbers you just pick one and knock on the door. Anyway on Friday I get there and I was actually talking on my cell as I pulled onto the street, and so I drove up and down it one time looking for the number, but I didn't see anything. As I was coming back up the street again I notice that there's a guy outside and he seems to be looking at me. I ended my call and stopped in front of his yard, rolled down my window, and asked him if he ordered the pizza.

He considered it for a moment and then said that no, he had not. "Oh," I said, "well then are you number 9? I'm looking for number 11 and maybe that's your neighbor." The guy considered that question for another moment and then said "I don't know...I had a stroke."

"Oh, OK," I said and got back in the car. Now, I'm not one to make fun of stroke victims...my dad had a stroke about 10 years ago and I know how difficult they can be. But for whatever reason his answer amused me...I guess it's what he says whenever he gets befuddled...but seriously dude, you need to re-learn what your address is.

Saturday night was slow and dull and I can't think of any stories that could even be slightly interesting...of course if you've read to this point you may think that was true of Friday night, as well...all that's left is Sunday to complete the final weekend trifecta for me at Roadrunner's, and though I can't know for certain I'm gonna go out on a limb and predict more tedium. To quote another musician: "I could be wrong, but I'm not."