A checkout story

I stopped in at Co-op to get some gro­ceries, and got in the short­est line I could find. The guy in front of me, man, he was a story.

He had a thin beard, grey eyes, and wore a bas­ket­ball tank-top and a ball cap. His arms were tat­tooed with num­bers and designs: a 12 on his left fore­arm, an ankh on one wrist, the word SATAN’S crawl­ing down the inside of his right forearm.

He had a 2‑litre bot­tle of store-brand cream soda, vio­lent­ly pink, and four pack­ages of Reese’s Peanut But­ter Cups. He paid his bill—$7.86—with a dou­ble fist­ful of dimes, and got 15¢ change back.

He’s got a sto­ry to tell. Prob­a­bly quite a few of them, real­ly. I just have no idea if I’m tough enough to hear them.