Danjournal: June 18, 2016
(An excerpt from the future Rockhead chronicles)
8:45 am
Still waiting on my boss Rockhead (real name Terry) to show up to work. A man in a black truck along with a younger version of himself in the passenger side pull up to chat with me
"Hi I'm Leno, and this is my son G'bl"
Full disclosure; I'm pretty sure his son's name isn't G'bl but those were the only sounds I heard since I was 1. Still trying to determine whether or not Leno was a real name, and 2. My mind was still mostly focused on the pudding cups in my car
"What are you here for?"
Leno says with the same kind of excitement someone should only reserve for bumping into your friend at the Toys'R'us as you both elbow children out of the way to get at the Wonder Woman Barbie and realizing they too have no shame
I state the obvious
"I work here"
"So you work for Terry?"
"Yes"
I said thinking that was already implied
"Kelly doesn't work weekends?"
He asks while looking like he's about to build to some sort of hilarious joke
"I don't know, I've never worked a weekend"
"So you just started today?"
He's still overly smiley and I still just want pudding
"No, like 2 months ago"
"You know Steve then?"
"Nope"
At this point I've lost all interest in this conversation. My mind is instead on the delicious pudding in my car.
"You sure? He works on weekends"
I blankly stare at him for a moment not sure if he forgot the past 10 seconds of our conversation or if I was really that distracted by pudding. So I repeat myself from before
"I don't work weekends"
"... you sure?"
At this point his stupidity is infecting me and I'm questioning if we are even having the same conversation. But I trudge on
"Yes, I know like 3 people here"
"And one of them is not Steve?"
"No"
But thanks to you I already hate this Steve
"Huh... I've known Terry for 30 years"
He adds this brag out of no where. The joy beaming off this Leno's face when he says this is greatly disproportionate to the reality of this wondorous fact he laid upon me. If I knew Macho Man Randy Savage for that period of time I'm not sure I'd show that much excitement on my face
"Okaaay... "
I can no longer hide the pain in my voice. Leno is cold to my plight
"Yep, 30 years... long time"
He repeats this to really hammer home the grand mediocrity that is his amazing life. At this point I remember his son, the vowel challenged, G'bl, is in the truck with him.
G'bl is staring straight ahead with a glossed over look like he has gazed into the abyss and it destroyed his once fragile sense of identity. I feel sorry for G'bl, though I'm not whether it's because this poor youth has to listen to his daft father all day, or that he has unfortunately inherited these remarkably unremarkable genes of the Leno name
I can see Leno is trying to pull me into his polite boring never ending circle of mind numbingly bland conversation. I make my move to ditch this and not end up like poor G'bl
"Yeah... I'm going to eat my pudding"
"Oh yeah, cool, we'll catch up after"
I see what you did there Leno. Nice try but I won't be trapped so easy.
I give him a vague lift of my hand partially resembling a wave as I walk away and give a non-committal
"Hnnnh!"
Game, set and match! I'm out Leno
I savored that pudding like no other