you wanna buy a monkey?

the other evening, my friend and i find ourselves running errands before a planned outting later that night. among other things, we hit up a nearby cafe and get mochas for a little pre-partying caffine burst, and then go to the corner mini-mart so that my friend can get a pack of cigarettes to satisfy the requisite nicotine-fix that will accompany that evening's drinking. anyway, she goes to the counter, sets her drink down to pull out her wallet and requests her particular brand of cancer sticks (meanwhile, i'm sucking down my coffee and milling around in circles in the background). at this point this big, bald, biker guy, leather chaps and all, if i remember correctly, hunkers into the mini-mart and heads straight to the back to grab some sort of malt beverage from the refridgerator section. he then lumbers up to the front of the store, plunks his drink down on the counter, directly between my friend and her resting beverage. she glances at him quizzically, as a kind of a message to him that he has invaded her space, and then resumes paying for her cigarettes. at this, the big, bald, biker guy leans in even closer to her and says, "you looking for a job??" now, i consider myself a fairly un-faze-able person, but when a strange bbb-guy offers you or your friends a job while standing in line at the mini-mart, it means it's time to get the heck out of dodge. "you looking for a job?"!? i must say that, for a brief moment, my friend and i were, in fact, transported to a "choose your own adventure" novel. wisely, i think, we did not choose the offered adventure. immediately following my friend's mumbled "no" and a couple of deadpanned blinks of the eyes from me, i snatched her coffee off the counter in front of bbb-guy with my right hand, grabbed her arm with my left hand, and together we beat a hasty retreat dropping money and/or loose cigarettes, i'm sure. as is often the case in situations where one does not choose the road less travelled, though, in the midst of our partying that night, we looked at eachother and queried, "you looking for a job???"