next, the dry cleaners

I was doing errands today, and had no choice but to finally return some movies I'd rented over a month ago. I kind of braced myself as I made my way to the rental place, which is called Earwax, but what I refer to as La Maison de Mildew, or just La Mildew, as Earwax smells very badly of mildew. At least this is the case in the basement area, where the movies are located (the cafe upstairs smells ok). So, as I had already armed myself with some aspirin before I left the house, there were no more excuses. Earwax was the first stop on my list.

When I got there, I explained everything to the guy behind the counter, and he began pulling up my account. His computer was running a little slow, so we made some small talk. He told me that his name was Brian, and we talked about movies for a while. Finally, as there was no way to any longer ignore the topic, I just came right out and asked Brian if the mildew made him sick. He told me that sometimes it got so bad that it was difficult to keep his food down. But then he added that, so long as he smoked pot continuously throughout his shift, it was bearable.

That was when I went into my purse, flashed him my badge, and told him that he was under arrest. I said Freeze! and everything. And when I did this he jumped back a couple of feet and knocked right into some shelves. And he seemed genuinely panicked for a moment or two, despite the fact that what I had aimed at him was not a gun, but a bottle of hairspray, and that what I had flashed him was not my badge, but my wallet (which, in all fairness, does flip open like a police badge, but is pink, and has inside it not a police shield, but a Raggedy Ann sticker).

After Brian recovered from the initial shock of my arrest, we started laughing hysterically. We just kept reinacting the whole thing, over and over, and yelling freeze! at each other until I literally had tears rolling down my face. I've never laughed so hard. I mimicked the shocked expression that he had had on his face, which made him double over and yell, stop! And he then played out the whole thing for me a millions times, and to ever escalating degrees of ridiculousness, my arrest, how he jumped back into the shelves. All of it. About fifty times, to the point where one of the shelves finally came down.

At which point I realized that there was a line of people forming behind me (and fair to say, they were NOT amused). I wiped my face off with my sleeve and tried to compose myself. But it was useless, and Brian completely lost it after that shelf came down. And, just to make matters worse, from all the disturbance some movies started falling off of the other, still intact shelf. Not all at once, but slowly, one by one, like a domino effect. And I think it was this slow, inevitable dropping down of movies that was Brian's final undoing.

He was now in the fetal position on the floor, and was laughing that laugh where no sound comes out. He seemed to be begging for mercy, and it got so out of hand that I briefly considered calling an ambulance. Then the manager came in, took one look at Brian, and fired him on the spot (which immediately seemed to calm Brian down, as he got up off the floor, and, though still kind of laughing, this time it was a great deal less). Then the manager informed me that they had already charged my account $92.00, but that I could keep the DVDs, as in effect, I had already purchased them. Which was fine, especially since I realized after I got home that I had forgotten them on top of the DVD player.