You'll remember the Loquacious Puppies- their drummer was involved in that big scandal last year, the one where he was accused of selling heroin to catholic schoolgirls, but it turned out the catholic schoolgirls were CIA operatives who were setting up a sting operation, trying to sell fake secret documents to a suspected Russian operative. They mistook Ted Nonetheless, The Loquacious Puppies' drummer, for the Russian operative. The irony was that Ted was actually doing the buying, like the CIA thought, not the selling, like the cops thought, and he thought he was buying heroin from a sixteen-year old girl named Donna who had borrowed her little sister's school uniform as a disguise. Donna was the product of a broken home, and more irony, it was broken because her deeply religious father was literally insane with the belief that his wife, Donna's and her little sister's mother, was a communist sympathiser. To escape the terror of her paranoid father and to rebel against his strict upbringing she engaged in bar-room brawls, usually started because she refused to give up her virginity, but teased boys with her provocative pool playing, and she needed to sell drugs to suppliment her work at the local Lemonade Joe's so that she could pay for the antibiotics from all the various infections incurred from split lips and and skinned knuckles from the bar-room brawls. She never touched the stuff herself and to this day, they say, she remains a virgin. The alleged Russian operative, name unknown but code named "Coffee," because of the color of his lips, was never caught because it turns out his disguise had always been to dress up like a catholic schoolgirl and pretend to engage the actual imformants in illicit activities at the local sleezy motel- while everyone thought you-know-who and the little girl were playing find the salamander for twenty-five bucks and a lollipop, the guy was actually spilling his guts to Coffee and the commies about the nature of America's particle accelerator research. Appearently the CIA's informant had confused the buyer for the seller, the g-men thought they were looking for a man who dealt with catholic schoolgirls, and not vice versa. Ted was nabbed, taken to D.C. and accused of buying secrets to use against the wonderful nation America. Poor Ted. He was so strung out that he admitted to using his band as a cover to tour the country and the world to swap secrets with the Russians, Isrealis, Sandanistas, and even a small terrorist group from New Zealend Called Xeneration G who's activities to date included the bombing of a desterted peptide clinic on the Australian mainland and an embarrassing letter sent to the P.M. of Great Britain. And here's the final irony- Ted, unbeknownst to his fellow band members, was three credit-hours away from a degree in quantum physics, and as such was able to completetly describe partical accelerators in such detail that the CIA were certain that they had their man. But they had to let him go when one of the operatives got suspicious with Ted's idiocy in other areas, specifically his passing a lie detector test by saying that the capital of the USSR was, "uh, like, Spain?" Local authorities tried to get Ted for the selling of heroin, believing themselves smarter than the CIA in narrowing on Ted's real crime, but it didn't pan out because Ted was a drummer, not a bassist, and despite his physics training could barely add two and two, and therefore was entirely unsuited for business.

The Loquacious Puppies are perfect for surfing the net.

An old lady came up to me and asked if I could turn down the music, and maybe help her with the number four copier? I told her I didn't work there. But aren't you wearing a Quartacopy shirt? she asked. I showed her my palms. Lady, I said, look at my palms. See how scratched up they are? I am a skateboarder, a skate punk, a four-wheeled rat, to utilize your octogenarian nomencalture, and you may not be aware of this, but the fashion in skate-wear is to don industry togs. UPS ballcaps, Burger King t-shirts, even a pair of United Airlines bag-handler's pants if you can get ahold of them. This shirt, which I paid for from money that I did not steal but instead earned as a cashier at Lemonade Joe's, is the only one of its kind amongst my clique, my brogue, my group of fellow skaters , hangers-on, and wannabes. In fact, it was in this shirt that I finally did a Gary Air with a McDonnavin half-twist, which, if you happened to be watching ESPN2 on January the seventh of last year, has only ever been succesfully accomplished by one other person, that being Scott Dunluvy, the worlds greatest, and perhaps not inappropriately oldest, skater.

She just looked at me.

The number four copier was the real reason my hands were scraped up. My brother, who is the one who works at Lemonade Joe's, not the same one as the Donna of Donna and Ted from above, but a different one at the Westwood mall, was really pissed off at my dad. They were having an argument or something, nothing much, like who has better boobs, Elaine from Seinfeld or Brett Butler from Grace under Fire. Normally I wouldn't report such sophomoric discussions, being a leg man myself, but I think it might be pertinant. Gary, my brother, believed in Brett, since she had the surgery and everything, insisting on architectual integrity and the rise of man's accomplishement in art over nature's. Dad preffered Elaine's, saying that although they were smaller they were natural, had a certain buoyancy, and could be made to appear larger if needs be, as in the episode where Kramer is part-owner of the theater that shows old movies. That's my point, Gary says, they are not constructed, they're natural occuring, and as such will fall due to the ravages of time. That's my point, dad says, they are natural, and will fall due to the ravages of time, and not from architectual failure, to use your term. Thus, as Elaine's boobies sag it will be a natural sag, such that an old man would still think of them as lovely and would want to fondle them and such, whereas Brett's will suddenly plummet one day, and no man will want them. Gary said that in the first place, that no other man would want them is best, because then he alone could have them, and isn't that thing which a man wants that no other man wants a good indication of his personality and individuality? And on the other hand, Elain's boobs are fake too, but whereas Brett had her's made bigger, Elain, being Italian, was naturally well endowed but had them reduced because she was unable, otherwise, to land television rolls that portrayed her as an intellectual. Dad didn't believe this, and Gary responded with the phrase, "I shit you." The in vogue phrase for youth of our youngness at the time was "I shit you not," but Gary adapted it to suggest to my dad that, yes, in fact, Gary was lying.

Well, that set dad off. He had won the fight, what there was of it, being as how they were watching "Ellen" at the time, anyway, but he couldn't let it go. He started harping on Gary about this and that, accusing him of using collusion and sarcasm in his arguments, and I'm not too certain that dad even knew what he was saying at that point. A commercial was on, afterall. Gary was cool with it, being used to dad's rages, until dad suddenly asked him why he put his biking shirts in his pants drawer, and not in his shirts drawer like his other shirts. That really pissed Gary off. He didn't know whether to berate my dad's obvious inability to see past opressive linear structuralism, or to be pissed that dad had at some point gone through Gary drawers. Probably looking for porno since mom was in the hospitable for a week having the skin on one of her little toes examined (a long story- I'd rather not go into it).

The upshot of all of this was that Gary screamed that he'd had it, that he was going to get a job and as soon as he made enough money he was moving out. He started at QuartaCopy, and things were fine until I walked in one day, snuck up on him, and screamed "Boo!" He freakeed right the hell out, dumped lemonade all over the number four copier, and threw me through a plate glass window before he realized what he was doing. The manager burst out of his office, saw me lying on the sidewalk and covered with broken glass, and immediately fired my brother. Gary actually ripped his shirt off, right there, and stormed out. The manager started making sure I was okay, and I was, since the glass was really cheap and had been placed in the frame incorrectly- otherwise I would have just bounced right off of it. Turns out the only thing wrong was my palms were all scraped up from landing on the sidewalk, my forehead having taken the brunt of the smashing from the glass. The manager asked if there was anything he could for me, fearing a lawsuit, I guess. I mentioned that I needed a job, and that it looked like he had a vacancy. He gave me a job right then and there, and I don't think to this day he has ever realized that my last name and Gary's are the same.

Gary went ahead and a week later got a job at Lemonade Joe's. He thanked me for it, since he met Donna there, not the same Donna as before, but a different Donna, this one was twenty-two not sixteen and walked with a limp and was Jewish. I met her, and told Gary she reminded me of a blonde Punky Brewster all growed up, and Garey snapped his finger. He said that in the argument with dad he had accidentally confused Punky brewster for Elaine, since Punky realy did have breast reduction surgery, to relieve back pain, and although he knew he was wrong about Elaine as sson as he said what he said, he said it anyway, but hadn't known what had confused him until that very moment, and he thanked me again. I never knew that about Punky Brewster (Or Brett Butler, for that matter,) but like I said I'm not a breast man but a leg man, which is why I spotted Donna's limp right off.

So this old lady is just blinking at me and holding a purse that must have weighed at least a million pounds in one hand and a flyer she had drawn herself with old markers and crayons and a Polaroid picture of a cat in the other. I recognized that cat. I was at my friend Lloyd's house, playing Destruction Castle on his Sony Playstation. Lloyd rents these games at a rate of about ten per week, and it's all for the aft-work. Lloyd's the best artist that ever lived, and he thinks if he can get in with a software company, he's a millionaire. In other words, he sucks at these games so much he can't get past level one to see the rest of the art, and I sort of help him out, since there isn't a video game out there I can't beat. I was just about to put the sword into the Balrog's throat when there was this loud crash on Lloyd's front door. The pisser was I was at three hit points with no more life spells or heal potions, and while I knew I would get enough xp from the balrog to go up a level, which means increased max H.P and therefore a sort of "free" heal, and I would get enough gold to pay for some heals and lifes, if I didn't kill the balrog right then I was toast and since Lloyd is too cheap to buy the battery saver I would have to start way back. But the thump startled me, and Lloyd too, judging from the slash of ink that wiped across what was otherwise a damn fine rendition of the balrog surrounded by headless torsos and disemboweled horses. We both ran to the door, since we don't live in a high-crime area like Arnold Donut from our school who answered the door one night and got a knife slash across his chest for it, the assailant having mistaken Arnold's house for that of a rival gang leader. Lloyd tore the door open and stuck to the screen was this cat! Shaking like a leaf and mewling like cats do when they're scared or hungry or mad or bored or whatever. It was the weirdest damn thing. And then out of nowhere was this woof and standing under the cat and wagging his tail so hard it made his whole butt move from side to side was the skinny Dalmatian. I mean, he could have got up and just ate the cat if he wanted to, he was big enough, but maybe his master or owner or whatever had trained him not to get up on doors and stuff. They do that alot, those hunting dogs, like my Granpa Terry who has a yellow labrador and if you go through a door when he is trying to follow you, even if there's a million other people in the house, he rears up and licks the window or scartches at the top until my granpa comes through with a paper and throws it at him. He never hits him with it, he just throws it, and even though he usually misses Doctor Steve gets a real guilty look on his face and gets off the door. But this dog was better trained, even though he was hopping around fit to barf and whining to get that cat. Lloyd- get this! Lloyd just shuts his door! And goes back to the game! I couldn't believe it! Lloyd, we gotta help that cat, I said. Nah, the dog was wagging his tail. I opened the door, and the cat was still there, and I started to open the screen door when Lloyd said don't let it in, but how was I supposed to open the screen door without leaving the storm door open? Well, I managed to get outside and shoo the dog away to the the sidewalk, although he didn't want to go, but at least he was wagging his tail so he didn't try to bite me or anything. When I turned around, the cat was gone, and the dog didn't even notice, he just walked back up to the door like he was coming in or something. It was all I could do to squeeze by and close the door.

I went back to the game, and of course I was dead, but what the hell, I started to start over again, buit then I noticed that I smelt like stinky old dog, and decided I was tired of playing for the day. Lloyd didn't see to mind, since he was drawing a picture of what looked like a great big devil dog chasing some kind of dragon-cat.

But I don't hang around Lloyd anymore, since I caught him the next day in geometry drawing a picture of my girlfriend.

I asked the lady of she lives on Jefferson and she says no, she lives a block over on Palm, and I told her I might have seen her cat but that was a week ago, and she says that was about the time he ran off. So I said, I'll tell you what, leave me this stuff and I'll whip up a web page for you- how about that? There's a spot in the city directory for that sort of thing, and that'll cover the whole city, and not just the neighborhood. She said, I don't know. I don't trust that internet. In my day, she said, we didn't have an internet. I can remember back in the winter of fifty-eight- you were probably just a gleam in your grandad's eye, but me, I was a handsome young woman. Well, I was walking to the store to buy some cucumbers, since there was sale at the grocer where that nice Mr. Peabody worked. Now, in those days, we didn't have mittens, and it was snowing to beat the band, let me tell you. Snowflakes as big as your head, and if I'm lyin' I'm cryin'. Of course, what with hairstyles and whatnot, your head might have been a different size. You should have seen all the different ways the cars and the lamposts and the mailboxes were covered. You know those fire hydrants? The one with the stickers? They were red once, but nowadays they're green on account of the rain and all. Acid rain will kill us one day young man, I can guarantee you that. So I says to her, where am I going to find a house big enough for all of this? Back then, you know, houses weren't as expensive as they are know. If you earned a decent wage you could take your best girl to the show, have a nice steak with onion rings, and have enough left over for a down payment on neat little white bungalow, and all from just one paystub! My dad used to say, although I called him father and not dad like you kids, there's no respect anymore, it left the day they elected that fool JFK, may he rest in peace, I said, I said when are you going to buy us a bigger house? But that's me, always running off to the store without my mittens in the middle of a snowstorm. Iron constitution, I have, never sick a day in my life, not counting that bout with malaria when I chased my highschool sweetheart all the way to Panama. The world was so much bigger back then, dear, what with the planes being slow and no telephones until your fifteenth birthday. But I didn't care, I loved my Joseph, until the day he died; sometimes Iike to think we were bitten by the same mosquito down there, in dear old Panama. That's where Mozart was invented you know. Up until then, complete myth! Oh it makes you laugh, doesn't it? Of course Joseph never went in for that kind of thing, mind you. He was a lot like my daddy in that respect, of course I called the man father and not daddy, unlike you hooligans with your pop and your old man and your dude. No respect, lost it all when we bombed those nice Japanese in World War II. I had a crush on Harry that embarrassed me and my mother sometimes, but I never forgave him for dropping those two big ones. It broke my heart. I've always wanted to go to Japan although they say you can get rabies like that. But I don't fear it, they have such cute children, and me with my iron constitution. It makes you sick, though, the way there's all this profanity in the world. I can remember a time when I was eleven and the word bottom was a blasphemy, got my cousin Cindy who was catholic excommunicated by the Pope himself! They don't mess around, those catholics, you have to respect that, although I could never go for it, what with all the fish and everything. JFK, the poor fool and may he rest in peace, they say he was a catholic but I never believed it. I mean Cindy had such a large nose and freckles over most of her body, and John was such a handsome man, even though he was far too young to be running the country. Not that I agree with Mr. Oswald's solution, mind you. There should have been a proper investigation like they did for Nixon. Like I said, they called him Tricky Dicky but if you even so much as thought such filfth when I was a child in the grammar school they would have beat you within an inch of your life with a yard stick. But I don't complain, no I don't, I'd take every lash again if it meant I could stay as firm and decent as I am. Bad blood in my family, and what if I turned out to be drunk or a prostitute or even one of those catholics like my cousins! Hell itself wouldn't have been able to punish the wickedness from me! An ounce of prevention and all that. No, It's been a good life, especially since Clancy my cat was given to me by those nice people from the society. He was ever so helpful when I was dealing with the passing of my husband, Jefferson, may he rest in piece. Named him myself, I did, and Clancy is a perfectly good name, even if he is a girl cat. Had to have him spade and neutered, just to be sure, but that means he doesn't roam around as much and I wouldn't want him to be hit by a car or used for some foreigner's dinner. They eat dog, you know, it's a delicacy over there, but we don't get the royalty here we get the peasants and they have to eat commoner food like cats and spam. Clancy is a good cat, though, never messes his litter box, and in the seventeen years that I've had him he's only gone through four cans of cat food! Can you imagine! And him fat as butterball turkey. But I don't mind, really I don't, because he travels well when I visit my sister in Florida and although you wouldn't believe it it can be rather cold there on some nights when the clouds roll in and dear Clancy keeps me warm and toasty beneath the coverlet. My sister's favorite show is Jeapordy, you see.

I just stared at her.

Then my little sister walked in and the I knew the jig was going to be up, since my sister just about freaked when she found out our brother got a job at Quartacopy and then freaked again when she found out he got fired and then she had her third freak of the week when she found out that I got his old job. My sister, Cindy, which is a weird coincidence, who is ten years old, is like this mega brain and reads about a billion books a day, and she's always at the library with this humongous list of books that she types up on the computers here, for free, even though she's the richest person in the house because no one gives her presents for her birthday and Christmas anymore since she just sells them; she hates toys of all kinds and never wears anything but sweat pants and t-shirts because she's always READING! These lists she uses, only a super genius coud understand them, she uses word processors and databases and spread sheets and pie charts, she has web pages bookmarked so she can find out who wrote what when and if it will be out soon or never in print again, and when she goes to the library with this tome of stuff to read and look up and peruse, she just WANDERS around! You'd think with all that work she would know right where to go, that she could walk into the libray blind and find everything she needs without even feeling around. One time when I needed a book on dalmatians, another weird coincidence, I asked where I should look and in fact she DID say to go to the fourth shelf from the left, top row, around the middle, and I would find three book on Dalmatians in particular and several book on dogs in general, although, she said, the four by Bynard Publ. were worthless because they put Dalmatians in the same group as other pointers which is ludicrous, she said, and doesn't designate the difference between the Dalmatian and, for example, the Whippet. But I've seen her at the library, she wanders around, sometimes she'll go back to the same row of book for or five times, and look in the same places, and she's even told me she'll go and look where an author's book would be if they existed- even though she's read everybook by a writer who is DEAD she STILL goes and looks where a NEW book that MIGHT show up if some of his works are discovered and published posthumously, I mean, she even did that for Shakespeare once, she admitted, although that's a bad example since they're always coming out with new editions, but never mind that, she was looking for a whole new PLAY. MAN, that is so weird!

But Cindy is very polite and would never use the computers at QuartaCopy without my permission, because she doesn't want to freeload when there's paying customers waiting. I knew she was going to come up to me and ask, and then the old lady would know that I worked there and that I had lied to her. I didn't need that, because when people your own age find out you lied they get pissed off or mad and treat you like a dog for a bit but eventually their subconscious reminds them that if they were in your shoes they would have lied too, and when younger people like my sister find out you lied it's like they feel a little bit cheated but also secretly thrilled because they know that when they're older they'll get to lie and drink beer and carouse and stuff too. But when older poeple find out you lied they give you this look like your a dumb little puppy, and there's no way their subconscous will kick in and remind them they were lyers when they were your age too, because I don't think old people even have a subconscious. My grandma caught me with my hand in her underwear drawer once when I was six- I wasn't some kind of weird pervert, I was just bored and curious and thought I'd take a look while grammy napped on the couch- but she caught me and asked me what thought I was doing and I said nothing, of course, I mean, I said the word nothing, and she just gave me this look that made me so ashamed that to this day I can't stand in another person's bedroom, not even my girlfriends, without feeling really guilty. And that sucks because when I go to my girfriend's house to hang out we usually end up in her bedroom since her brothers are such idiots and her parents have about as much charsima as a potato.

I had to think fast, maybe pretend that I was a cool boy scout type who could fix copiers for old ladies even thought I'd rather be skating, and was about to when a really tall guy with some kind of round hat walked in, with a box under his arm, and I knew I was definitely stewed.

It's kind of complicated but it all makes sense in the end. My sister has one posession which isn't your basic linens, clothes, or books, and that's this six foot long stuffed snake on her bed. It's red with a fat blue head and goofy smile on it's face and a big ol' purple tongue lolling out of it's mouth. I was in my room, trying to read a cooking magazine (do not ask me why) but it was so dang blasted hot and I couldn't get my fan to work right. It's an ancient box fan and it rattles unless it has a lot of weight sitting on top of it, like it's pining for those lovely days of yesteryear when it sat in a window. But I didn't want it to blow hot air into my room from outside, and also I need it angled towards my desk. But it was only blowing on my legs, and I wanted it to blow on my upper body. I knew that I could rig a tilt and weight contraption if I could just borrow Cindy's snake. It's the perfect weight and thickness and it's full of sand so I can mash it flat in places to balance more weight on. But from past experiences I knew that Cindy would go ape-shit if I so much as touched the snake. I mean, you could borrow her books or hang out in her room while she was at the library since hers never smelled like gym socks and sometimes it was the only way to get away from dad and his vaccuum cleaner, I swear to God the man thinks he's some kind of genius for chasing you out of your room to "vaccuum" when what he's really doing is looking for drugs and pornography. Well, you probably figured it out, I decided to get the snake anyway, but Cindy was in her room, so I told her that I needed to borrow the snake and that I would be very careful and that she could come over to QuartaCopy and use the manager's computer one day when he was gone if she wanted, since his computer is about a gazillion times more powerful than the ones in the store and since he has a direct internet connection which means it's almost like virtual reality on the net, even Infoseek searches for something as generic as "The" come up instantaneously with nine million hits. She said okay, as long as I didn't hurt it, I mean, she was practically drooling at the thought of using the boss'es computer. I took the snake into my room and had everything set up and it was perfect like I said, and I was getting good and into the article on chili rellenos when the fan started to make it's little noises, and I knew I needed to put more books on top. But to do so, like I said, I had to beat the snake into shape, and I was pounding away on his head when Cindy walked in to ask me when I worked next so she could use the computer. But when she saw me beating the snake's head she screamed and ran out crying. Boy, did I feel bad. I put her snake back on her bed all nice and pretty and tried to find her, but she wasn't anywhere. I felt just bad so I ended up walking to my girlfriend's house to ask her what I should do. Now my girlfriend is also named Cindy which is weird but what's weirder is they both sort of look the same, except where my sister keeps her hair braided while my girlfriend keeps her loose. Also whereas my sister is some kind of mega-brain, Cindy my girlfriend, God love her, is a rank and file idiot. Don't get me wrong, I love her to death, and when I've got a job and a life and money I'm going to marry her and when were both old and sixty and drooling I'll die in her arms. But she is stupid. She loves everything and she's always taking classes and reading these big old textbooks on trigonometry and animal husbandry and the history of textile mills, but she doesn't remember any of it and gets it all confused. Once while we were playing Trivial Pursuit at my house with my family we asked her what planet was named after the goddess of love she said "Uranus" and it was so funny we thought we were going to to pee our pants, and Cindy, sweet woman that she is, thought we were laughing at her accuracy, not her irony. So since they're so different in temperament , if not in looks, it's not too tough for me to treat them like two different persons, and I only ever got weirded out by the similarity once when we were kissing because I happened to look over her shoulder when we got done as we were hugging and I saw my sister in a mirror. We were at my house at the time.

And Cindy and I haven't had sex yet, although I've seen her naked about a million times. She's the most unabashed person there is, and she'll get dressed and undressed in front of me like I was one of her brothers. She pretty much treats me like one of her brothers, except I'm the brother she likes and the other ones are the ones she doesn't give a damn about. They're all football jocks and if you so much as pause in their presence they'll grab you and give you a noogie and I don't care if you are the King of France they'll give you a noogie and then pat your ass as you leave like you're all on some kind of football team at the big game. I don't know what they'd do to me if I ever did have sex with Cindy, probably nothing, although every once in a while, Kent the oldest one will make jokes about shotgun weddings and having to defend his sisters honor with a fist and a smile. But like I say it hasn't happened yet, and not because we loath the idea or are afraid or feel like we're not ready- it's more like, why bother, we'll be married eventually and why not save it till then? I mean Cindy is hot and everything, and many is the night I've spent in the shower with a bar of soap and thoughts of Cindy, but with babies being born faster than people can take care of them, it's fine to wait.

I got to Cindy's and she was in her room, getting ready for cheerleader practice, which means getting dressed, and of course I watched her take off her school clothes, and look around her incredibly messy room for her uniform, and while I was asking her what I should do, since she and my sister are otherwise best friends even though they have this great age difference and 180 degree opposite personalities, she asked me to reach into her underwear drawer and get her a pair of panties and a bra. It was bad enough being in her room, although I was more or less used to the guilt and could ignore it as a relic from my youth, sometimes, but the underwear drawer was a little bit worse, even though I've rummaged though it many a time since I'm always helping her get dressed and there's no way a man can choose the right underwear for a woman the first time. So I got out what I thought was the correct pair of lowers and uppers and tossed them to her, and she rejected the top, saying she needed the mono bra, and I said the what, and she said the one that makes me look like I have only one boob, and I said this one? and she said yes, and I said it looks like a tit house. We laughed at that. On the way out her door she gave me some advice, which was basically to not ask for the snake ever again and to buy my sister something really pretty, or maybe a toy. Like I said, she's not too bright. So I sat on her bed for a while, flipping through Cosmo, until it was time for work. But first I went home.

Finally I found Cindy, in her bedroom, and she looked okay, and I told her I was really sorry and I would make it up to her, and she said I was already going to let her see the computer, and I said, well, anything else, too then, and she got all red in the face, and I said what, and she said well, she needed to go to the store to buy something and she didn't want mom to go with her, because mom is the worst when it comes to stores, she walks up and down every single aisle at least five times, I mean I'm no sexist but what the hell does she need to walk up and down the fishing lure aisle at Walmart for? Nobody in my family fishes. I asked her why dad couldn't take her and she got really embarrased and said no way, it had to be me, and I said okay, sure, anything, I had to work for a while, but afterwards. She said okay. I got to work, my fifth day on the job, and I was all alone except for an old man at the color scanner with great big bushy eyebrows, and the tall guy with the round hat comes in. He's all smiles and English accent and what he wants is business cards. 900 business cards with his name and his job and his adress and phone and fax and email. I got all the information from him, and it was all I could do not to laugh in his face because his name was Reginald Titmouse and his email adress was Rtit@Understudy.org. When he made it out the door I burst out with a loud bray like some kind of donkey, and the old man looked up at me with his huge bushy eyebrows wiggling and I hoped against hope that Cindy would stop by like she sometimes does after cheerleading practise so I could tell her about it. I got to working on the cards, but I wasn't payng much attention to what I was doing because I was wondering what Cindy needed at the store, that she couldn't go with mom or dad. Then it occured to me that she was getting older and maybe she wanted to go buy someything womanish like a traing bra. That would explain her avoiding mom, since she would want to get in and out as quickly as possible. That would also explain dad, since he would probably want to give her a lecture on budding womanhood, no pun intended. Dad's a great guy, but the best way to turn a guy to crack is to get my dad to lecture him about the evils of drugs. Well, thinking about the squeemish topic of my sister's developing chest, as well as the memory of rifling through Cindy's underwear drawer as she got dressed, altogether must have influenced what I was doing on the computer. I didn't notice it unitl the next morning, however, after Reginald Titmouse picked up his cards without even bothering to look at them. I usually keep one business card everytime I make a batch, sort of like a souvenir, and I was looking at it when I noticed that what I had put on the guy's business card was Reginald Tithouse.

But here it was two weeks later and only just now is the guy coming in to complain. Maybe the old lady was a blessing in disguise- I could pretend to deal with her while I came up with some sort of story for Reginald. And that's when I was struck by the pseudo-epiphany. It's like deja-vu, sort of, that weird feeling that you get in your brain which I'm told is caused by chemicals and is not really psychic at all, except this is when you finally almost figure out something and it's like it's on the tip of your brain. Me and this guy were sitting in front of the principal's office talking about that old show Three's Company- and now that I come to think about it, that might have been why I was reading that cooking magazine, since Jack Tripper was a chef and I was thinking about that while I was wandering bored through the supermarket magazine section with just enough money in my pocket to waste but not quite enough to save for something better, and I spied the cooking magazine and got to thinking about how Jack Tripper was always cooking for people and maybe I could make something for Cindy since I beat up her snake. No, that can't be it, because I was reading the magazine before I beat up her snake. Whatever, it was Jack Tripper that made me buy it because me and this guy were talking about the show and we could not remember the name of the middle blonde, the one that replaced Chrissy and then was replaced shortly after by Terri. We knew her name started with a C because we both agreed that they should have kept the C thing going as well as the blonde thing, and named the third one Carla or something. And that led to this huge debate about why Carla was or wasn't a good name fo her, since I say Carla had connotations of a certain sexual wantoness, that it would be a good name for a prostitute, and the guy totally disagreed, he was wearing this megadeath t-shirt and had about a billion pieces of metal stuck in various parts of his body and whereas I was waiting in front of the principal's office because I'm in charge of supplies for the girl's volleyball team, this guy was probably there because he'd stolen the fieldgoal posts or something like that. He said that Carla was the name for an honorable woman, like a saint or something, except he insisted it was saintess even though it isn't, but I didn't argue that point. Finally I allowed as how Carla is a good name for a prostitute, but one with a heart of gold, and he agreed with me almost so fast that I thought he was being sarcastic, but it's been my experience that guys who wear megadeath t-shirts have as much capacity for sarcasm as a cardboard box. He said saintesses are usually women who were loose and then found Jesus or Buddha or whatever, and so Carla is a perfect name for a prostitute with a heart of gold. But Terri was not a prostitute with a heart of gold; and while she did illicit from men a sort of sexual expectation, she didn't really sleep around, although, somehow, she wasn't a tease. So we couldn't figure out what her name should have been, and most frustrating of all, we couldn't remember the name of the middle blonde.

So while I'm standing there, surrounded by the old lady and my sister and Tithouse, this faux-epiphany comes to my head and I know that if I just give it thirty seconds thought I'll have her name, and there's nothing quite like the feeling of remembering something that you couldn't remember, kind of like how a sneeze feels good. But fighting my brain for space was the solution to my problem, which would apease the old woman, my sister, and tithouse, without my getting in trouble at all. Which would I go with? Sacrifice the name for the soution? Or sacrifice the soution, which was kind of like when you suddenly in the thick of it when there's balrogs running after you and you're running out of anti-slime salve on your feet but there's still miles of slime left to run through and you just dropped your last arrow and your sword is rusted and it's looking like Lloyd wants to switch things off if you don't do something, like, now, just so I could recall that name?

And that's when the door opens and in walks my boss AND my girlfreind which just about fried my skull because now my sister couldn't use his computer like I promised and also I couldn't tell Cindy about tithouse since the man was right there but I HAD to tell her so I could point him out because of all the pople in the world to misscall tithouse he SO didn't fit the description except maybe for his hat, I'm not a breast man so I'm not sure, and I couldn't wait to tell her later because I would say do you remeber when you stopped by Quartacopy and that guy in the round hat was yelling at me for messing up his business cards? And she would reply no, what guy? So I had to point him out now. Suffice it to say my brain was going in seven directions at once, and I just about threw myself through the new plate galss window, even though I knew it wouldn't brek and I would just bounce off.

As fast as possible I said to the old lady, "Ma'am, I think you'll find the number three copier is now free; why don't you leave me a copy when you're done and I'll do that net thing," and as she waddled away I then said to Titmouse, loud enough so Cindy could hear, "You're name is not Tithouse, sir, and I apologize for the the inconvenience; we'll have a new batch of cards, free of charge, ready by noon tomorrow," and as he started to walk away I said to my boss, loud enough for my sister to hear "I'll pay for those cards myself, boss, at my employee discount, of course," and as he nodded and walked into his office I said to Cindy, "Do you think you could take Cindy to the store real quick? I told her I'd do it but I hafta jump on those cards for Tithouse," and as she kissed my cheek and hand-in-hand walked out with my sister the name "Cindy!" was ripped out of my brain and dropped at my feet, the name of the middle blonde on Three's Company.

And while I was glad I had remembered it, it sill had been painful- I nursed the raw edges of my cerebellum as I took the copy form the old woman before she realized that I was standing behind the counter.