2006-12-13 - 1:45 a.m.
A few years back, there was this fellow who worked at the Bellynice Video Store on the corner of 7th and Montana Ave. Now, I am calling the place Bellynice, but it was really the name of a gigantic chain of thousands of stores, which are currently battling Netflix for dominance of the DVD and video market. For purposes of not using any proper names, though, let’s call the blockbuster-filled video store Bellynice. It makes it harder for folks to find it by doing a Google search.
Anyway, there was this fellow who used to work at the Blockbuster, uh, the Bellynice on the corner of 7th and Montana. He was the manager of the place! And he ruled the store like the Emperor Caligula ruled Rome. His appearance was rather unprepossessing. He was about average height, with curly-balding hair, and a long snoopy nose overhanging droopy and rubbery lips. He had bad skin and the East European look of someone who probably had hair on his back and pimples on his ass.
Oh my – but when you would go into the store, it was the most amazing thing to watch as he gave orders and commands to the young minimum wage lackeys who scurried hither and thither to do his bidding. He took the job so seriously. He was one of those nice retail men who are wholly defined by their gigs. He was a company man – it was all “I am Mister Bellynice! And President Bellynice and I believe that the company policy is this-or-that!”
You could tell that he was part magnanimous boss and part hateful nag: If you were one of his minimum wage lackeys, there is no doubt but that you would find him quite exasperating.
“Kyle! You have shelved THE WAR OF THE ROSES in the wrong section! You KNOW that it is a BLACK COMEDY, not a ROMANTIC COMEDY! Do it right! Do it again!” the manager would snarl at some pimply, couldn’t-care-less wage slave. Or:
“Dean: Every time a customer rings up a purchase of $15 bucks or more, he should be given the free sample of Tasteefree Microwave Popcorn and licorice! You know this. Why can’t you GET it? What’s WRONG with you?” Or:
“Kelsey, dammit, why are all these empty plastic Diamond boxes still on the workstation? I told you to handle it HOURS ago! What is WRONG with you?”
The various dweebs would inevitably kowtow and wheedle within the manager’s earshot, but the moment he turned his back, they would snicker to each other and make jokes about him behind his back. He was that kind of a boss, you see.
A few years back, the manager vanished from the store, to be replaced by a perfectly pleasant, robotic 20-something boy with a chiseled chin who was clearly managing the store while studying for his MBA. We never knew what became of the other manager.
I only tell the story because the original manager has re-appeared, now working at the little family-owned drug store across the street from the video store. Time has not been kind to him. In fact, I would guess that the man has a tale of horror and woe to tell, if only one could in all politeness ask for it, and not come across as being nosey or vulgar. For his story is seemingly an atrocious one.
Do you remember that sequence in THE OMEN when the heroes go to some monastery in rural Italy to talk with the priest who helped birth Damien from a jackal’s belly? Another priest notes that the old priest has “fallen from Grace” because of his wickedness – and, even though in an earlier scene, he is seen as being hale and hearty, now he has lost an eyeball, shudders and shakes with one palsied hand, and drools out of the side of his mouth.
Well, such appears to have been the case of the former Bellynice video store manager. Over the past few years, it appears that the once mighty and tyrannical boss has suffered some kind of a stroke, or been in some kind of a hideous, brain damaging accident. When you see him now at the drug store, where he has a job shelving cosmetics and making change, he seems to have lost easily two thirds of his IQ.
His formerly rigidly, upright spine now curves like a corkscrew, and he limps from side to side like Quasimodo on a bender. As he performs some task at the drug store, his mouth opens and closes like a fish, and his tongue flaps up and down, like a frog testing the temperature of the air. He shambles about the store, his hair all a-fuzz and his eyes drifting hither and thither.
I have the flu, as you may or may not know, so I found myself in the drug store just today, buying some Alka Selzer plus and some Pepto Bismol. And there was the former Bellynice manager, ringing up my order, under the watchful eye of HIS manager, a kindly, grandmotherly lady with tortoise-shell glasses, peroxide hair, and a kindly, helpful air about her.
“Twoooooo thirty, twooooo thirty three, twwwwwooo thirty five! And four fifty change. Blooby blooobyy bloooby bloo!” the former manager drivvelled poking buttons on the cash register at random and tapping his foot neurotically.
“No, no – that’s a five dollar bill, dearie,” the manager overseeing him insisted, reaching over his shoulder and plucking the bill out of his hand. “We give him a one dollar bill, not a five as change on a ten dollar purchase!”
“Woooga! Woooga! Woooga!” the former manager smiled imbecilically, a strand of drool bubbling over his lower lip and down his chin, as he handed me the corrected change. “Blagablooby blaagablooby boo!”
You see, don’t you just want to know what happened to the poor man? What force blasted him, clearly ruining his life, in a short matter of a couple of years? I found myself wondering, was he the victim of some kind of a horrific car accident, which left him with moderate brain damage? Or did he have a MS-like illness that afflicted his brain and nervous system, turning him into a virtual idiot?
And what can it have been like for him to have to work precisely across the street from the very same Bellynice store which he ruled as Laird and Imperatur for so many years? Do you think that he even remembered working there? Could he have been like Ronald Reagan at the end of his life – a man who had ruled the world, but now had no memory of even himself?
If nothing else, it is a compelling message that you can’t take anything for granted in this world – and sometimes the gods randomly smite people for seemingly no reason at all.
