never. i’m a drugstore cowgirl

There are a few words that describe my life pretty well.

Boring is not one of them.

It is very rare that I will find myself sitting on my futon and go, “I’m bored. Nothing ever happens around here.”

An example:

I stay home from work today. (Sidenote: We’ve been having some really weird on-hold music at work. When I called in sick they put me on hold and I was listening to a reggae version of “Man in the Mirror.”)

I decide to stay home and de-stress myself and just chill and read some of my new books from Amazon.com (which I am completely in love with and spend too much money on… but they just come to your mailbox with a push of a button. It’s so damn easy and cheap! — This message has been brought to you by pamie, who is an associate of amazon.com, so when you go to her books page and click on one of her recommendations, and you buy it, she gets a small cut. So when she sounds biased here, it’s because she is.)

Anyway, I have to go to the pharmacy to pick up the pills that are supposed to make my cervix beautiful again, and I’m leaning against the counter talking to the pharmacists trying to get a generic equivalent of my pills so that my insurance will cover it.

You: Wow, pamie! You’re right! You’re life is fucking amazing! Never a dull moment, you!

pamie: I’m not done.

You: Whatever.

So, I’m talking about my asthma inhaler or whatever, and the pharmacist goes over to help this guy at the other side of the counter. And I hear him go, “Yeah, I need two of your biggest bottles of valium, and your biggest bottle of Vicodin–”

And I’m thinking, “How strange, that he can just say, ‘your biggest bottle’ and it’s not like a prescription or anything. I wonder if he’s a student of some sorts.”

So I turn around and walk over closer to him and look at him. Just a guy in a flannel. Twentysomething. Blue eyes. Blond hair. A little grungy. Needs a good shower and a shave. Looks a little bored.

Then my brain piped in, with my mother’s voice, “It’s not polite to stare, honey.”

So I turned back around and waited by my side of the counter for my pills. The man with the bottles turns toward us, walks over, looks at us, and then leaves. The other pharmacist came back over:

“We’ve just been robbed. He had a gun. I’m calling the police. Lock all the doors. No one can come inside or out.”

So now I’m a witness to a robbery where I was the only person who went over and STARED at this guy who had a GUN and was trying to ROB this place and it looks like I’m trying to get some sort of PHOTOGRAPH in my head of what he looked like! I can’t believe no one got hurt. We were all staring at him… me more so than the others.

The police came and we gave our statements, and the pharmacist was amazed at how much I knew.

“I just remember his face,” he said.

“Yeah, well, if I had known he was holding a gun on the other side of him, I probably would only remember the gun.”

The police officer is asks the pharmacist for his address, and he gets all flustered and can’t remember his house number, and then we laughed a little, and then the police officer asked me for my description of the guy and I said,

“Flannel shirt. Red. He had blonde hair, kind of parted in the middle and, like, wispy on the sides. He had sort of small eyes, and they were sort of slanted on the sides.”

And the policeman radioed in, “Further description: Red flannel. Looking for a possible Asian fellow.”

“No, he’s not Asian!” the pharmacist and I said.

“Not Asian?” he asked.

“No, he had those slouchy, puppy-dog eyes, kinda.”

“Correction,” the police officer radioed. “Subject has ‘puppy-dog’ eyes and quote ‘wispy’ hair.”

He rolled his eyes and asked me where I lived.

I couldn’t remember my apartment number. “2213. No, wait, that’s my web address.”

I can’t even be a witness without screwing it up.

The police officer thinks that I think the assailant is one of the Backstreet Boys, and the pharmacist is wondering why I spent so much time looking at him, and I’m there trying to buy cervix medicine and it’s all very strange.

It was a weird feeling, being scared after something that was dangerous. It was like, “Man, imagine how scared I would have been if I had known what was going on!” That’s a strange emotion. Retrospective Fear.

They didn’t catch the guy. Somehow he ran fast enough that no one knew where he was.

I guess I did my civic duty for the day.

Just going to get some medicine, and I get thrown into a robbery.

Like I said, it’s never boring around here.