It’s A Sign
I SAW A SURE SIGN THAT SUMMER IS APPROACHING. When I pulled up outside the Gas Station/Mini-Mart there was a new sign in the window.
Being the Smarty Pants that I have been since birth, (And possibly before according to what my mother told me one day after she had downed a couple glasses of wine.) when I went in to get a Dr. Pepper for Dawn, I had something to say.
After getting the soft drink and digging out the $1.06, tax included, I went up to the cashier pay 
station. Needless to say, I had to wait in line behind two “good old boys” paying for the gas to fill up their Ford F-150, a kid buying enough candy to make him a pleasure to have in class, and three people doing their financial planning by selecting just the perfect scratch-off lottery tickets.I don’t know why there are at least twenty different varieties of scratch-off lottery tickets – they are all the same. You take a coin or a thumb nail and scratch off the gunk on the ticket. There is no strategy involved. You win or you don’t. Yes or no. Yet people will stand there gaping at the lottery display trying to decide what to do. I want to scream at them,
“Pick one, will you? I’m old. I don’t want my last words to be ‘Why am I dying at the Mobil station?’”
After a period of time long enough to turn coal into diamonds I get to the front of the line. As I am laying down my $1.06, tax included, I said to the horribly bored man behind the counter,
“I see that you are advertising that you have worms.”
“Yup.”
“Y’know, a halfway decent doctor could take care of that for you. Maybe even a Vet, if you don’t mind the mess.”
“That’ll be $1.06, tax included. You’re the ninth person to tell me that joke.”
“I’m not joking with you. I am offering unsolicited medical advice. Just think of me as your own personal Dr. Phil.”
I could hear coughing from the people in line behind me and somebody mumbling about lottery tickets.
That’s the way I look at it – you can’t put up a sign like that one – “We Have Worms” without expecting a little blowback from guys like me.
A five minute drive away from the Mobil Mini-Mart is the Jiffy Mini-Mart gas station and an after-hours bank for anyone with a handgun. They have a sign that says, “Live Bait!”
People like to fish around here.
I was asked by a nervous clerk there one night to, “Just pay for your Dr. Pepper, and go.” All I had done was ask him about his sign. I wanted to know if, after having the “Live Bait!” sign on display all day, did they turn it around at 6 PM so that it read “Sushi!”
Some people just can’t handle the stress of dealing with the Public.
Down the Hall on Your Left 