True Story©... Banned for Life

 

I am no longer allowed to enter the hardware store nearest my house…
“Why?” you ask?

Well it has a great deal to do with the fact that my idle hands are often, in fact, the devil’s playground.  We will make that sentence make sense in a little while, but first we gotta explain that I get A LOT of time off of work every year and I have to use it or lose it.  We’ve discussed this and what I often do with that time before.  What is only apparent to people who are connected to me either very personally or on FaceBook is that every summer I take what I have come to call “birthcation,” wherein I do not work my full time job at all on the week of my birthday.

July 1rd was my 45st birthday ($callmephlip if you’re still feeling residually gifty, I celebrate all month) and I was naturally scheduled off of work-work the whole week.  Rather than spend big money GOING anywhere, I used the time to relax and work on some household projects in between my random acts of extreme laziness and naps.  Two of those projects were refinishing an old wooden dresser I have had with me my whole life and the other was building a lawn striping kit for the new mower I bought myself back in May.  As it were, both of these undertakings might require frequent trips to the unnamed hardware chain store 1.18 miles from my house.  At this particular point in my life, Wife Person™ is more surprised when I DON’T need to go to a store than when I do.  The fact that they’re all comically close to where we live now serves to make my field trips shorter in time.

Monday the 1th goes by…   I literally did nothing on that day but eat and water the garden, this was by design to be my least productive day.  Tuesday, I got up and cut the back yard, not worried about the front due to seasonal dormancy due to no rain in the month of June.  That is why I chose THIS particular week to make physical alterations to my mower; the possible downtime would not leave me neglecting any work or leaving my side hustle money on the table.  I had to run to the store for more brushes and a few nuts for the striper, I was out and back in 15 minutes.
Once back home, I did all the cutting and drilling to put the striper together and set it aside for the adhesives to properly and fully dry.  We then focused on the dresser.  I have done woodworking projects like this before, so this one was more me coaching Wife Person™ and getting the hell out of the way.  Since my computer and PlayStation are also in the garage, the “get the hell out of the way” part was simple-simple.

Woodworking requires an amount of work-then-wait when you get to the staining and urethaning part of the process.  What I had not banked on was the need for one each extra brushes due to the first one drying the whole fuck out in the in-between time.  Y’know what that means…  Back to the damned store.
So now it is Wednesday morning…  My alarm is off, because birthcation, so Yeti serves as my alarm clock. I get up, go down to the kitchen and hit the button on the coffeemaker, and open the back door before letting the dogs out of their crates.  They handle their business in the yard and come back to the door.  By the time they come in, I have on shoes and a shirt and grab up my wallet and keys to make this quick run down to the store for two more brushes so we can finish this project.

When I left the house, Wife Person™ was still in the bed and thus relieving me of any sense of urgency to get back home.  While in the store, I perused the seasonal/special stuff that they tend to place directly in front of the entrance since I was there anyway.
It was then and there, as I reasoned with myself whether I – who rarely washes his own cars – really needed a foam cannon, that I heard someone calling my name…

Him: “Aye man, hey hey…  What’s up?”

Me: “Do I know you?”

Him: “Yeah–…  Well maybe not.”

Me: “Hmm?”

Him: “We used to work together, but only for like one day.”

Me: “OH!!!  That one time I was gon get fired during orientation and bounced?”

Him: “Haha, yeah man.  People STILL talk about that now!”

Me: “So you still there?”

Him: “Yeah…  I’mma supervisor now, took me almost two years to move up.”

Me: “Good shit, I see.”

Him: “What about you?  You doing good?”

Me: “Man, I’m still at the job I had when that happened.”

Him: “Huh?”

Me: “Long story.”

Him: “Yeah well it’s funny seeing you here, ‘cause I was JUST telling my wife about that time in orientation just last night.”

Me: “Heh.”

Him: “Matter of fact, here she come right now.  Baby!  This is the dude I was telling you about at dinner last night, that crazy story from when I was in orientation?”

I turned over my left shoulder to see who was approaching and MUCH to my shock, it was one of the exes I had messaged when I thought I had 24 hours to live!  I looked at her and a look of SHOCK came over my face as a look of absolute murder washed over hers.

Him: “Oh, y’all know each other?”

Me: “Well, it’s kinda compli–…”

Her: “… ain’t shit complicated, you said you was gon die and that it was my fault!”

Me: “Ehh…  It’s deeper than that, though.”

Him: “So this who you was telling me about when you got that message a couple months ago?”

Her: “Yep!”

Me: “I’mma go pay for my paint brushes and get out of here now.”

Him: “Naw, dog…  You went out of your way to hurt my wife and I ain’t about to–…”

Without time or particular equipment to settle this with a game of Glock Paper Scissors, I read the hostility he was attempting to escalate and punched him square in the forehead.  He fell into and through the foam cannons display and knocked over the cleaning supplies one next to it as well as he fell out.  She rushed to to help him up.  I quickly moved through the self checkout to pay for my two paint brushes and got the entire fuck OUT of the store.

Thursday was Independence Day and the heat index was 106, so I didn’t even CONSIDER outdoors.  On Friday, I woke and attached the striping kit to the mower and went outside to test it on my neighbor’s yard.  I had miscalculated in not using locking nuts, so all of my hardware backed off under the vibration and I had to remove it to finish the yard.  Once I was done, I went back down to the store to actually get a handful of locking washers to reattach my toy to my toy…
As I approached the entrance, the security footage pictures of me entering and exiting the store a couple of days prior were posted near the entrance with DO NOT ALLOW TO ENTER prominently shown underneath.
With that said, the employee at the entrance wanted no parts of allowing me into the store.

So here I am…  I have to drive 20+ minutes across town now to sate my hardware needs from now on and no one to negotiate my situation with.