Day 160

Friday May 7
160/365
Grace in Small Things

1) First Manager on Duty week-end. Was able to work at Biscuit Bucket in morning. Been a long time since working with the morning crew. It was like old times.

2) Able to go home and change before heading to Mall. Joe's right! There is nothing at home to eat (when was the last time I shopped at Aldi?) so I rustled up a coupon for Dairy Queen and it was Chicken Tender Basket for lunch.

3) Gave Mrs. Long Suffering her birthday gift of the Rooster scrub ceramic thingie from Biscuit Bucket she once mentioned that she liked (see how listening can really pay off?). She said she loved it, I was warned not to get her any Rooster stuff because the whole world has gone crazy over the years bestowing her with everything rooster under the sun.

4) The office was ever so quiet after five. I stretched out in my back office (the one I am never in) and read.

5)The head of security, Barney Fife , was kind enough to stick around Friday night to settle me in. The "gangs" of Middle Tenn. hang out at the Mall and sometimes it can be quite an ordeal getting these kids out the door and on their way home. But, the night was uneventful in that sense. But it was fun to see Barney approach a bunch of teenagers and see them scatter like cockroaches. Barney and I bonded in a way (I think he is a pig headed non-bending ass at times). We talked about our own teenage years and how we drove around in cars, riding from one end of town to the other. He knocked off at a Drive-In Restaurant (the grandfather of Sonic) and they hung out until the police told them to go home. I, on the other hand, drove around town with the rest of the kids looking for someone to go buy us Schoenling Little Kings at the liquor store, then we would head out to the back roads and guzzle down our cream ale before it got hot and heave the little green bottle at the back country road signs then head back into town where we would cruise from the Dairy Queen on the west end of town to the Convenient store on the other end of town. Loop around the island infront of the elementary school and back up Main Street. Every body did it - everybody did it. Now I look at these kids hanging at the Mall and kind of feel sorry for them.