Look, don’t judge me for honoring a homeless guy’s request.
Oh, but you’ll never guess which of his weird-ass requests I’m talking about…
“But don’t worry–I never cook my baloney sandwiches in the tent, I only run my little camping stove outside the tent. And I make sure it’s completely off and cooled before I bring it back in. I’m all about ‘safety first’–don’t want no fumes messing up my brain cells, ya know?”
“Yup, yup, safety first. Good thinking…”
I stood there, still pumping gas, wondering if it was the gasoline fumes was messing with my head. One moment, I’m thinking about how I’m actually going to be home at the exact time I promised My Beautiful Bride I would be, after a sedatively long afternoon of shopping for the finest vinyl flooring with ‘Gladys’, and the next? The next moment, I’m having a semi-surreal–and frankly, quite sad–conversation with some random guy about the proper way to cook processed meats in the wild.
Well, let me back up the story a hair, and maybe things will make slightly more sense.
You see, it all started when I decided I would save a buck or two on a full tank of gas…
“Hey there! How’s it going? You live around here?”
On my way back from my aforementioned flooring expedition, I had a choice between two routes to get home. Noting that the slightly longer journey happened to take me through downtown of the hamlet in which I reside, I thought to myself, ‘A-ha! Ima be going by that one mini-mart with oddly low gasoline prices, I might just stop in and fill ‘er up!”
And right about the time I had done gone and filled ‘er up, seemingly out of nowhere, this older Black gentleman appeared and made a beeline right towards me.
Seeing as how I was the only person at the gas station, I was pretty much a sitting duck.
“Oh, jeez, here we go…” I thought to myself, as it became pretty clear pretty quick where this conversation was headed as soon as the guy started conversing with me while he was still halfway across the parking lot.
“Hey there, I was just passing through on my way to the grocery store, hoping to get a jumbo pack of baloney and a loaf of bread, you know…just trying to maybe put together some meals for the next few days…”
I had started carrying a handful of twenties in my wallet for just such occasions, and I knew it would feel good to help hook a brother up with his baloney.
“Sure! I’d love to hel–“
But before I could get my hand halfway in my pocket, my dude just kept on with his stream-of-consciousness ramblings.
“…yup, I got myself a nice little tent up the road behind Lowe’s–“
“You mean Lowe’s the hardware store?” It was my turn to interject.
“Nah, nah, Lowe’s the grocery store,1In my neck of the woods, this is indeed a problem, in which “I’m headed to Lowe’s” is an ambiguous statement because there are two completely different typed of stores with the same ----- name. but as I was saying, I don’t want you thinking I’m doing anything dangerous with all that baloney…”
My mind wandered a bit as he dove headfirst into his schpiel from earlier about fume safety and not cooking in his tent and what-not…what had me slightly puzzled was the fact that it would have made more sense if he had been talking about the hardware store instead of the grocery store. I mean, this guy was clearly on foot, and the hardware store was only about 2 miles up the road, while the grocery store was eleven miles up the road.2It just occurred to me that perhaps he was talking about the Lowe’s grocery store that they are just now building, which is only 1/4 down the road from the Lowe’s hardware store… Why the heck would he be wandering so far from home?!?3Okay, maybe ‘home’ was a poor choice of words, given his circumstances.
Next thing I remember, I was mumbling in agreement about the whole ‘safety first’ thing.
“Dangit!” I thought to myself, “For once I was actually going to be home on time, but noooo, I just had to get accosted by homeless James Joyce here.”
Before he could get much further along in his run-on sentence (but after somehow triangulating where I lived within a quarter-mile radius, on account of my proximity to Lowe’s the hardware store), I finally found enough social willpower to get him to stop chattering for two frickin’ seconds.
“Well, I think I can help you out with all your baloney needs, my man,” I said I as whipped out my stack of Jacksons, but was immediately embarrassed by the fact that I had just rifled through 5 of them (while hiding the $100 bill still in my wallet)4#HumbleBrag? only to pull out 1 measly $20 bill for him.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I really need to get home to my–“
“God bless you, son! G0d bless you, indeed! Say, what’s your name?”
Welp, it looked like that throwing money at the situation had failed to get me out of the conversation, seeing as how my conversational partner was still bravely soldiering on in our dialogue. But hey, the least we could do would be to give each other the dignity of being called by their name, right?
“Who me? Sure. My name is B.J…”
…and it was at this point that the conversation took a turn for the…er, not even sure how to describe it, but it took a turn, that’s for sure.
“Guess what my name is!”
Gotta admit, I didn’t see that response coming. Was there something about him that would give me a clue as to his name?
“Umm…let’s go with ‘Terrance’!” I mean, the dude did just ask me to guess his name. And that just happened to be the first name that telepathically appeared to my mind’s eye.
“What? Huh? No, man, it’s A.P.!”
Get a load of this ----- guy. He just asked me to guess his name, and then he acts all shocked when I get it completely wrong? Seriously?
And on top of that, his name was A.P.?!? Not in a trillion alternate universes would have I–or anyone else, for that matter–even come remotely close to guessing ‘A.P.’
But he didn’t let any of that deter him from the conversation at hand.
“Yeah, it’s A.P., but people call me ‘Bulldog’. I’m always around here downtown, and all the people know me and when they see me on the street, they give me a fist-pump and say ‘What’s up, Bulldog?!?’ “
“Oh, yeah. That’s a cool nickname…”
“…and since you live around here, next time you see me on the street, just pump your fist and say ‘What’s up, Bulldog?!?’ And I’ll say, ‘What’s up, A.J.?!?’ “
This ----- guy…
“Uh, it’s ‘B.J.’, actually…”
“Huh? Oh, right, then I would say, ‘What’s up, B.J.?!?’ “
“Cool, cool. Welp, see you later! Enjoy your baloney…”
“Wait?!? You mean you actually guessed his name? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Hey, don’t you judge me! I bet you would do the same if some rando blindsided you with the same question after you had just freely shared your name.”
I had unexpectedly found myself defending my actions and words when attempting to regale My Beautiful Bride with the Tale of Why I Was Ten Minutes Late.
“And the best part is that you went full racist with your guess–‘Terrance’?!? Oh, lord, I’m crying! He was Black, wasn’t he?”
*sigh*
“Yes, Dear, he was Black. But I vehemently disagree that ‘Terrance’ was a racist response. Did I go with something like Ty’Queaf? No. No, I did not. Ergo, I’m not (as) racist.”
“Aaahh! I can’t breathe!”5Okay, this wasn’t meant to be a reference to Eric Garner…but here we are, retrospectively acknowledging how ----- up of joke that would be.
And yes, she was literally crying and out of breath from laughing so hard. Apparently she found it exponentially funnier than I had. Sure, I was bemused and perplexed by Terrance’s antics, but tears and shortness of breath? Maybe I was just too close to the situation?
“*Ahem* Anyways…I can’t help but wonder if that’s why the gas is so suspiciously cheap there–it’s a ----- honeypot!6Maybe this word doesn’t mean what I think it means… I wonder how often a hapless sap like me pulls up for some low-priced petrol, and then BOOM–they’re caught up in the seriously sad story of a dangerously under-balonied Terrance, and then next thing they know, they’re handing over large denominations of U.S. currency just to get out of the conversation…I bet the gas station gets a healthy kick-back from all his collections.”
“Interesting theorem. A tad racist, but interesting nonetheless…”
“Damn. Now that I think about it, that was the most expensive tank of gas I’ve probably ever purchased in my life…”
The point of the story is…well, this is kinda evil, but I just can’t help but recommend you try out Terrance’s–er, dammit, I mean A.P./Bulldog’s–socially screwed-up strategy. Give it a whirl–next time you meet someone new, and when the moment arrives in which you would normally exchange names, go ahead and ask them their name. And when they politely oblige, quickly demand that they “Guess what [your] name is!”
And whatever you do, do not relent until they actually try guessing it. Because you were dead serious, right? If you have to, look them square in their [potentially racist] eyes and let them know “That wasn’t a rhetorical question…”
Oh, and after you’re done waterboarding them into guessing a culturally-insensitive name for you, don’t forget the chef’s kiss: you calling them by the wrong name…
Content created on 10 March 2023 (Friday)
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