I used to work at a discount store in Brooklyn – cause that’s how Brooklyn I am. It was/is a small mom and pop type of place that sells pretty much everything that you’d find in a Duane Reade or Rite Aid, only without a pharmacist.

The stores customer base was/is mainly local residents, and people that moved away but still drove an hour to do all of their shopping in Bay Ridge, freaks. Given that, if you work there long enough you recognize many of the regular faces easily.

One familiar customer face in particular was a white man in his 60s, soft-spoken, and always polite without being overly friendly in an annoying sort of way – let’s call him Mr. F.

Mr. F. enjoyed doing all of his shopping on Saturday afternoons around 5PM, or Sunday afternoons around 3PM – yes, I worked there a long time.

One particular Sunday in the heat of one particular steamy, hot, August, Mr. F. came in with a whole laundry list of things that he needed. These were all things that he didn’t normally purchase, and he asked for my help in making sure that he got all of the exact things written on his paper since all of the items were “doctor recommended” as he said.

At the top of Mr. F’s list I was able to see that there were instructions on prepping the body for a colonoscopy. With the list below consisting of exact quantities needed of the following Fleet Enemas, Glycerin Suppositories, Phospho-Soda, and Pain Relief Pre-Moistened Anorectal Pads.

Mr. F. got all of the required written items, then stood there for a moment thinking to himself, and then took an extra twin pack of enemas, he said, “Just in case.” As if this amount of internal combustion materials being bought by one person for his or her single usage was a normal thing (it wasn’t normal).

Ewww…

In case you don’t know what all of the above items are, they are over the counter products that help you get lots of bowel a flowing, except for the wipes. The wipes are to try and keep your anus from getting hurt or sore on all of the toilet paper you would have to use when taking any one of those products.

Then after his basket was nearly overflowing with Fleet products, he informed me that he had a colonoscopy scheduled for the upcoming Tuesday, and that he needed to “clear himself out” prior to this appointment.

A week went by, I hadn’t seen Mr. F. since he was normally a weekend shopper, but I had thought about how many times he must have had to race to a restroom from all of the over the counter junk that he had to ingest, or squirt, and or place with effort inside his body. To this I giggled to no end about.

Then the very next Sunday Mr. F. came in, and asked me if we had a particular Biore scrub – sadly, he didn’t mention how his colonoscopy went, even sadder he didn’t mention what all of the Fleet products did to his stomach or his toilet.

Back to this Biore product, I knew exactly what he was looking for, and knew the exact shape and design of this product. I walked him over to the fourth aisle, to show him this product, that’s when I ran into a problem – we had just rearranged almost the entire fourth aisle’s product placement, and I couldn’t find the Biore tube.

As we stood there by ourselves looking for this product I was overcome by a retched, awful, nasty smell of a fart that seemed to be able to burn my retina’s and peel the paint off of the ceiling at the same time.

Mr. F. and I were the only two people out in the store on the floor, and since it wasn’t me, it had to be him.

I momentarily tried to pretend that I didn’t notice his flatulence, while I kept looking for the Biore with one held breathe, and at this exact time Mr. F. took seven giant spaces backwards away from me. Then, he said in the most calm and serious of all manners, this,

“I just farted…”

I didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable, so I didn’t laugh in his face, and I couldn’t breathe much longer so my reply was,

“Heeeey, no problem, it happens to all of us” and then attempted to change the subject with “Now I know the Biore should be over here…..???”

Mr. F. didn’t want to hear any of it, and politely asked, and I swear to God these were his exact words here,

“Could you please leave? I need to do some more.”

W…T…F?!?!?!

I couldn’t dare laugh in his face, because he had always been so respectful and a nice guy to all of us that worked in the store, so I told him, “okay” and went to go behind the counter to tell the cashiers and the manager what just happened so we could all laugh together behind his back.

As I walked down the third aisle towards the counter, he called me back to his location, and when I got there again he said, “Please, don’t tell anyone about this.”

I flat out lied to his face with, “Oh, I won’t tell anyone about this.” Then proceeded back to the counter with a huge grin and a barely contained laugh.

When I got behind the counter I had to sit down and whispered the entire story to everyone, then we all laughed, and laughed, and laughed until we cried – Mr. F. was none the wiser, and kept shopping there on a regular basis until he informed us that he was retiring down to Florida a couple of years later.

1) Getting a phone call from anyone telling you to turn on the Today Show.

2) You wake up from an announcement that the N train you have been riding is at the last stop in Coney Island, when you live off the R line.

3) There is a garbage truck picking up three tons of garbage up off the curb from the restaurant below some chicks bedroom that you had drunkenly accepted the offer into the night before.

4) A bird is sitting outside your bedroom window chirping “THREE! THREE! THREE! THREE! THREE!” none stop for ten minutes. (This one has gotten me three days in a row now.)

5) The police are knocking on your apartment door to see if the woman without identification who just beat up a woman in her 50s directly in front of the local city councilman’s office is indeed your 83-year old grandmother.

6) You awake from a massive amount of horniness building in your shorts and find yourself in an empty bed.

7) Due to his lack of memory, your other boss calls you worried because you didn’t show up to work that day, this, after you already spoke with him two hours earlier to inform him that you were “too sick” (glug glug) to go into work that day.

Your fat neighbor is boasting in an extremely loud fashion to his wife that he “looks so good and fit after losing only five pounds” bleeds through the walls of your bedroom.

9) Your stomach decides to tell you at 4AM that the buffalo chicken wings you ate during a few drinks seven hours earlier was not a good idea.

10) A middle aged Trinidadian woman slips a piece of paper in your mouth while asleep on the D train during an evening commute home.

11) You find that you’re in your cubicle or windowless office, and it’s only 10:45AM.

12) Your dates drunken fumbling with their bedroom doorknob awakes you in time to watch her give up on her attempts of opening the door, and then actively decides that their bedroom floor is just as good as a toilet.

13) You fall out of bed like a four year old.

Today, right before lunchtime one of the admins on my floor was trying to peek into the large conference room that I knew for a fact to be empty. She had a meeting in less than five minutes and needed to get in. I offered up my knowledge that it was indeed empty (despite her firm belief that someone was locked inside napping) and informed her who had the key to let her in.

She asked if I could keep an eye on her meetings materials, and left it on top of a wooden lock box that collects the floors confidential papers to be shredded. She asked with the firm statement of “Please do not let anyone dump my papers inside the shred box.”

I obliged.

Then I heard an unfamiliar voice come from near where the admin left all of her paperwork saying, “Oh, is all this paperwork to be shredded?”

My initial comment was going to be an “Absolutely not!” and as the “absolutely” was coming out of my mouth I saw that it was creepy Missouri girl asking in a joking manner, so I changed my “not” into a “go for it”, and then we had a short smile laugh.

It was the first time she ever spoke to me other than her quiet monotone “excuse me” she’d say if I was in her way by a set of cabinets, despite that we are cube neighbors – never once a hello.

I would never have been able to tell from her monotone voice that she had been joking, thankfully I saw that she had a big grin on her face, it was a laughing grin, so I knew that she had to be joking.

Needless to say, she broke out her Fire Marshall Bill face, since that’s exactly what and whom she looks like when laughing.

This marks the second time I’ve seen her make this face, and I think it’s just great.

So I went out and purchased a new laptop this evening, and besides the hit to my credit card, I am taking a hit to my brain.

For instance, where the hell are the buttons that allow me to use the features that I know for a fact to be in this notebook?

With all of the manuals consisting of either a) troubleshooting notes on things that would make me want to pour gasoline on the notebook, or b) contain advertisements of things that I would never in my life buy. The only things that I seem to find are the easily displayed “uninstall” buttons, which ever so eaily delete all of the beautiful features that I just purchased.

Maybe it’s because I have been living happily at home with my 1999 Compaq Presario, where everything definately ran slowly, however, at least it was all clearly labeled.

Even the control panel is conpletely different.

What happened to everything in this world.

I now know what “Brooks” from the Shawshank Redemption must have gone through when he left prison and went to live in that halfway house.

I caught the Don Cheadle movie over the weekend with the Cheese. I call it a Don Cheadle movie simply because saying that a good drama is an Adam Sandler movie sounds like an oxymoron to me.

Go see this movie, great storyline, great acting, and it is by far the best movie to feature NYC as the background in a very long time, quite possibly the best ever.

It could be one those out of the blue released at a weird time Oscar movie type of movie, but I doubt that it would get a nomination for two reasons, a) due to its release time, and b) Adam Sandler is a lead.

Don’t get me wrong, Sandler does great in this movie, and will shock most people after seeing this movie. He’s come a long way from Billy Madison.

I’d say more, but I wouldn’t want to be a spoiler, so let me leave you with this about Reign Over Me – I can only hope that I one day write something as good as this script.