Your Quintessential 90’s Boy

He was your quintessential 90’s boy. He wore torn denim pants and a black shirt with “Furniture” printed on it in yellow letters. A week’s length of dark brown hair poked out on different locations on his face. His eyes had the squint that defied the very light of the sun itself. He was chewing a gum from yesterday. He was not tattooed, but he had his right hand in the left back pocket of his jeans. Presently he took it out only to pick and elongate by pulling out one end, while holding down between his semi-crooked teeth the other, his expired gum. He put the gum back to his mouth and faced the setting sun, still wearing that defiant squint. He mumbled a promise only he could hear, stretched out the sleeves of his shirt, and walked into the 24-hour convenience store.
    This story took place in Wamahoo County, in the heart of America’s heartland. The name of the 24-hour convenience store will be kept from the knowledge of the general public, but the name of the attendant present that afternoon won’t. The attendant’s name was Lester. He was around the same age as our quintessential 90’s boy. He also had five days’ growth of unshaved facial hair, and was also chewing gum. Whether or not the gum was expired, however, is made less of a question by the presence of an empty wrapper of Wrigley’s™ gum on top of his counter. What remained a question was whether or not it was actually paid.
    He greeted his only customer for the afternoon, our quintessential 90’s boy, with a courteous bow, and the question: “How may I be of any help whatsoever?”
    Our quintessential 90’s boy ignored him. Our quintessential 90’s boy ignored everything. He entered the 24-hour convenience store with one—and only one—purpose in mind, and he believed he could carry it out without help from anyone, especially from some 24-hour convenience store attendant around his age.
    He swivelled his upper body around, scanning the signs hanging on the ceilings describing the goods available on their respective aisles, for the item he was looking for. It took him awhile, but when he spotted the sign that said “Bread and Pastries,” he exclaimed, “Aha!” that almost gave Lester, the attendant, a heart attack.
    Lester wasn’t a very healthy boy. He was one boy who more often than not on medical diagnoses would be described by the diagnosing physician as being unhealthy. Very few qualities of a sound health could be found contained within his physical body. He wasn’t a boy any sensible staffing officer would think of entrusting a responsibility that requires good health. He wouldn’t as a matter of fact, have been accepted to work for the 24-hour convenience store he was working in if not for his clever uncle, who doctored the results of his medical evaluation, declaring him instead to be “as a matter of fact, a very healthy human being.”
    This wasn’t the first time a job-related incident had almost caused Lester his life. Around two weeks prior to the events described in this account, Lester was unloading a fresh supply of canned vegetables when suddenly, he felt dizzy, and in a cautious, step-by-step manner of collapsing—first on his knees, until finally he was lying on his side—he dropped to the floor with tens of cans of canned vegetables. Co-workers rushed to his aid, many of them convinced that Lester was having a physical breakdown.
    Lester, of course, with what little strength that remained in him, denied this by a confident laugh, and informed everyone that he was as a matter of fact, a very healthy human being.
    Everybody refused to believe this, though, and expressed further how they had been noticing that Lester seemed to be having a fast-declining health, especially during the past few days.
    If anybody had delivered the funniest, most easily-comprehensible joke, and Lester heard it, he wouldn’t have laughed as hard as he did hearing that observation from his co-workers.
    “But I’ve only been hired yesterday,” he said.
    This was true. Lester had indeed been hired just a day prior to his new-canned-vegetable-delivery-related incident. And this was in spite of the fact that he had applied for the job, been interviewed, and passed the written exam, some six months earlier. He was still in the ninth grade when he applied, was interviewed, and took the written exam. Knowing that it was only a couple more years until college, Lester had taken it upon himself to help his parents save up money to send him to a respectable “Boston-based college” when that time came. He sought part time employment on many various establishments within their locality other than the 24-hour convenience store he would in six months be employed in. Among them were their town’s furniture repair shop, a meat/butcher shop, a fast food restaurant, a car wash, a leading real estates appraisal firm, and their school’s football team, where he applied as a mascot.
    All those applications yielded first interviews, and all except the real estates appraisal firm written exams. Of all the things Lester was thrilled about in all that practically crawling on his belly begging for temporary employment, it was taking those written tests. He liked written tests. In school, he couldn’t get enough of them. Taking written tests was even his primary reason for wanting to attend college. His first choice for his major—one he still hadn’t made up his mind about at the moment—was one that would present him with the most written tests as possible. One reason he loved taking written tests—and probably the only reason—was he passed them. Sometimes he not only passed them, but he got a perfect score.
    Lester was your quintessential written test passer. If there was a record of having the most written tests passed for a boy his age, Lester would probably hold the number one spot. There wasn’t a written test Lester took in his entire life in which he failed.

Sick Pedestrian Fantasy

Everyone of us has this sick pedestrian fantasy wherein we’ll jump in the way of an oncoming expensive car to be run over, thinking that if somebody has money to own a car like that, he probably has enough money to have us hospitalized.
    I tried it once in a street in Mak—, where I used to work as a tie-wearing Elevator Stability Checker. It was the afternoon snack break of what I would get to learn as my last day in my job.
    The poor motorist was this yuppie from up the street, going by the name of Clink Thabado. Except that I was sure it was Sabado, especially since it was “Sabado” that was written on the his driver’s license when he showed it to the police. But he kept on pronouncing it Thabado anyway. I never argued with him. His car was an expensive pre-released 2007 Mercedes GT. You never argue with somebody who has a car like that—even if he’d practically run you over with it.
    In the first place, it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t even expecting me to cross the street. All he as expecting was heavy traffic at an intersection farther down the street, so he accelerated with all his car's 500-something bhp.
    Meanwhile, there I was, with my freshly-purchased, though not necessarily freshly-cooked, pack of pancit cantón from the “mobile store” on the sidewalk. As soon as hearing the roar of his engine, I knew it was an opportunity I shouldn't allow to pass—it was only a matter of correctly timing the jump into the street and into the front bumper of his car.
    I didn’t even feel it—the impact, that is. Oh, I did feel pain, sure I did. When both your knee caps have been broken, with a tibia sticking out of your right knee pit and your rib cage is protruding slightly a few inches out of your chest than it normally should, when there is a depression in your arms shaped suspiciously like tire marks, and when you touch your face and feel nothing but splinters of glass, metal, and crushed bones, I’d bet half a year’s salary you’d also feel pain, even just a tiny bit.
    For the driver, Clink Thabado, it was an entirely different set of emotions that he felt. He looked really nervous. You can tell just by looking at his face. Nothing there gave the tiniest hint that running over a pedestrian with his expensive 2007 GT was part of his brilliant, money-making plans for the working day.
    He was an overpaid Network Games Consultant, as I would later learn. Familiar with the game Counter Affidavit™? Well, it was this guy, Clink Thabado’s team of overpaid Network Games Consultants who came up with the idea of bringing the game out of Law School campuses and into computer games rental shops everywhere. And the idea worked, too. You can tell, because, look at this man’s car. Not too many people can just buy a car, much more, a pre-released car! How often can one come across a vehicle that isn't due to the market until five more model years? I tell you, not very often. In fact, one won’t come across such a thing at all.
    Clink Thabado was a kind man, though. He didn’t even try running away from his “crime.” One of the first things he did was buy me another pack of pancit cantón from the “mobile store” from where I had bought it, because my pancit cantón spilled all over the street when his car hit me. He handed it to me, his hands only slightly less shakier than his trembling voice. I immediately felt sorry for the poor fellow. If I had known he would be that interpersonally nice, I wouldn’t have jumped into the street just to prove my little theory. I really wouldn’t. In fact, I began regretting having pulled my little stunt as soon as he came to me with a new pack of pancit cantón.
    “Oh, you shouldn’t have bothered,” I tried my best saying, but all that came out was a wheezing, gargling sound.
    I felt sorry for all of it more when I realized I couldn’t move my arms to at least receive the pancit cantón from him.
    Poor guy. Every sentence he uttered then had “prithon term” in it, and the fear of taking a shower with fellow inmates, once in prison, and dropping his soap. I never got to find out what exactly he meant, and I couldn’t inquire even if I had wanted to.
    My girlfriend could, but she was so busy wailing and screaming and spraying saliva and snot and tears on my bloodied face to ask Clink Thabado. My girlfriend was a very attractive Shredder Operator working on the same building as I did, only, she was working on a proper floor, being on the ninth or nineteenth floor or something. Of course, I was, as required by my job, inside an elevator all day.
    She learned about my accident about five seconds after it happened. The time of the day being the time for afternoon snack break, she was also coming down from work to buy food from the “mobile store.” She was with what I hoped were her friends.
    Onlookers gathering around an expensive-looking car was the first thing she and her companions noticed as soon as stepping out of the building exit. That it was an actual expensive car and it had run over someone, and that someone happened to be me, her boyfriend (of all people), was not what she had expected. In fact, an idea even occurred to her to get back inside the building and call me from my elevator so we could hand-in-hand, like the real, actual sweethearts that we were, witness whatever the commotion was. The only problem was, unlike me who kinda knew on what floor she worked, my girlfriend had no idea at all on which of the 16 elevators of our building I was on at that particular moment.
    Not that my girl didn’t care about me—she did. It’s just that, the job of an Elevator Stability Checker is so complicated, no one is allowed to know, even his girlfriend, what particular elevator whose stability he is checking he is in. And my girl understands it real well, if it would help you a lot to know. She really does.
    I really think she loves me. Before this little accident I’m talking about, that she really loves me was more of a theory, something unproven, something open to suspicion. When the accident happened, I was all of a sudden convinced that she truly does.
    You know, you only get to have a few chances in your life of really finding out if your girl loves you, and this accident, as I’ve hinted a few sentences above, for me, let me know how she truly loves me.
    The reason I can say this is that when she saw me involved in this accident, she recognized me, not from my face—it was all covered in shards of glass and car parts—but by my tibia, that very bone jutting out just below the back of my knee. She cried my name without warning and instantly hunted down the one responsible for my situation. That, of course, was Mr. Thabado.
    My girlfriend made the poor yuppie about ten times more tense than before she showed up. My girlfriend cried and yelled a lot on my behalf. A lot of her crying and yelling made reference to a guarantee that she would never rest until Mr. Thabado got locked up in prison, where he’d surely be made to take a shower, and, as sure as there was gravity, drop his soap, because of what he’d done to me. Finally, she snapped at him, “Look at what you did to his pancit! Go buy for him another one.”
    That’s what had made Clink Thabado, the young, brilliant, overpaid Network Games Consultant with an expensive car that he was, go to a “mobile store” and buy pancit cantón.
    Oh, how my girlfriend loves me! If I could make intelligible words come out of me that afternoon of what I would get to learn as my last day in my job, I would have said the nicest things to her, and thanked her, and confirmed my love for her all at the same time. As it was, I was in a circumstance that very much prevented me from doing any of those things.
    And in the first place, all of it was just a fantasy… a sick pedestrian fantasy.




© Jay Santos 2002.