I Don't Look That Old

A guy at the deli used to sell me beer in high school – I wasn’t tall enough to put the money on the counter yet there he was, filling my prescription. He’d charge me like twenty bucks for a sixer of bud light or something and I’d go off into the woods with eighteen friends and sip it down and… wow, I’m off track.

So on a Monday, I’m rested and happy. Usually, I spent the weekend taking long showers and sleeping in. By Thursday, I’m seven different seasons of exhausted and the only color in my cheeks is reflected off the dried coffee stains on my shirt. This particular Thursday, I left work around 8:00. God hates me for missing Ash Wednesday.

As I trudged home from the subway, cold air slapping my beard, tugging my tie, I turned into the market to do my grocery shopping: a quart of whole milk, a six-pack of bud light and a can of tuna. Two people have that grocery list: crack-heads and musicians. Holding cash, expending all of my energy to stay vertical, I heard the guy at the register whisper into a pillow at the other end of a tunnel. “Sorry?” I said. And he said, “I.D.?” Thoughts lined up in my head:

Was he talking to me? And for that matter, where was I?

Look down at my items to make sure he was ID-ing me for some sort of weapon: A gun or perhaps a Samurai sword. Nope, just a can of tuna, a quart of milk and some bud light.

Oh! The bud light! Shit. Right.

Wait a second; it’s nine-thirty on a Thursday night. Does he think I’m going to somehow make amphetamines out of my groceries and smoke them behind the gymnasium before calculus?

Dude, gimme my fucking tuna and bud light so that I can eat dinner and cry myself to sleep listening to old Cranberries albums, wake up, dump the milk into a carafe of coffee and go back to work.

A half-groan, half-sigh. It’s alright, I get it: Despite my vibe, my rhythm, half-wearing a tie and fully wearing exhaustion, I just don’t look that old.