Throwback Thursday: ‘Some Say the World Will End in Fire’ by R Daniel Lester

Ahead of me in the grocery store line it’s this guy’s turn to place his purchases on the belt, but instead of doing so one by one, like a rational human being, like a mensch, he dumps his basket out all over and then briefly wears the empty basket as a hat. When he’s done, he hands it to me and I put it on the pile of other baskets. 

“You’re a big bright shining star,” he tells me.

You know how you can take a guess at someone’s life by what they have in their basket? Well, this guy, I don’t even want to know. His purchases are three packs of Magnum condoms and 12 bottles of lighter fluid. Even weirder is how he’s looking at me. Like he knows me. And maybe he does because there’s something familiar about him too. I feel like I’ve seen him before.

“Hey,” he says. 

“Hey,” I say.

“That’s what I said.”

“Oh, right.” 

“Yup.”

Silence, say hello to awkward.

I ask if we’ve met before and he gives me mock pain.

“Dude, what, you don’t remember me?”

“Uh …” I say, searching. Then I figure it out. “Lauren, right?”

“No, bro, my name is not ‘Lauren Wright’.”

“No, that’s my sister. You dated her.”

“Sorry, hoss, wrong cowpoke.  Though maybe I should be the sorry one.  ‘Lauren’, huh? She sounds hot.  Is she hot?”

“I guess.”

“You’ll introduce me, I’m sure.”

“I will?”

“Sure. After you” — and he covers his mouth, mumbling quickly — “pay for my groceries.”

“Excuse me?”

“For what?”

“Pay for your groceries?”

He grins a sly, curved grin, like a cat burping canary feathers  “Did you want to? That’s neighbourly of you.”