Peanut

As I was staggering back to Anderson after a hard weekend of celebrating freedom with some old pals of mine, it occurred to me that I needed food and a 300TC bed sheet. I knew I could surely address at least one of these needs at a local soulless conglomerate, so I pulled the Green Geezer into Wal-Mart and skulked around like a drunken muskrat for about fifteen minutes. When I had completed my purchases and finished a lovely discussion regarding the cashier's grandson, I swung my cart around the queue and ran smack-dab into the following inquiry: "You go to school at Anderson?"

The door-greeter, who must have witnessed my conversation with the cashier and interpreted it as a general willingness to chat with anyone, anytime, pointed at my shirt (which bore AU's monogram) and again questioned, "Do you go to school down the road, there?" I smiled and informed him that I was a student there at one point but had since graduated. Rather than accept my invitation to graciously forgo any perfunctory exchange of pleasantries, he proceeded to open a jar of discourse that took well over fifteen minutes to fully consume! Among other nuggets of wit and wisdom that were unearthed during our dialogue, I learned the following:

• I was one of the few people in the world to know him as Gerrold Heiß. Most folks call him "Peanut."
• He'll be eighty very soon; he's outlived not one, but two spouses, one of whom was at one point married to his identical twin brother whom she outlived.
• He's proud of his four sons and they call him frequently.
• His reasons for being a door-greeter are not financial. As he put it, "I'm not filthy rich, but I can afford to buy a hamburger now and then [wink]."
• While life might be hard at times, God has no reason to give you more than you can handle.

One of the funniest comments he made came right after he informed me that he had taken vitamins every day for over thirty years. "Yes, you've got to take good care of your body. And back when I had a woman, I used to take pretty good care of her body, too." That just about made me lose my composure. Anybody who knows anything about me knows that I love to hear an octogenarian talk dirty.

You know what'll take your day from ordinary to amazing in .39 seconds? Get an email from somebody inviting you to be a part of this. That's right; after a seven-year hiatus, I am reprising my role as a camp counselor. If I remember correctly, kids really seem to respond well to pop-culture references involving the bird flu or Fountains of Wayne. Hopefully, that is still the case.

-Ryan