yevlax

The Prophet of Wal-Mart



Many years ago when I was healthier, I worked as a cart-pusher at Wal-Mart for a few months. One of my co-workers was a fellow named Chad.

Chad was a pretty big guy, just over six feet tall but not fat, just stocky. He was a ginger, but it was hard to tell because he always had his head shaved and was clean shaven. I think he'd mentioned being in the marines once, but no one else verified this. He wore those kind of coke-bottle glasses that looked as if they could hold goldfish in them. This only made him a little more intimidating.

Chad talked a lot about blowing up Wal-Mart. He said he could do it with some supplies from Sam's Club, where he'd worked before getting transferred over here. He had it all planned out. He tried to recruit me for this endeavor, but although I hated my job I wasn't particularly inclined to set off explosives in the town shopping center.

Chad claimed to have the gift of knowing when people die. He swore he was never wrong about this.

I had to ask. You know I did.

We stopped over at the side of the store so Chad could 'prepare'. He closed his eyes, and focused for a moment, before slowly pushing his index finger towards my forehead until it touched the skin. He concentrated. He opened his eyes again. "You will live to be eighty-three," I laughed, and told him about my kidney disease. "Eighty-three," he repeated, looking me square in the eyes through those coke-bottle glasses.

Eighty-three. Huh.

A lot of people close to me know that I have this weird thing with numbers. I like both eight and three, so eighty-three seemed like a good age to kick it. That's long enough to get a real creative-type career going, but not enough that you get so sick you can't function anymore. At least in the normal folks.

Even when I was in the ER a year and a half ago, I kept thinking, "I can't possibly die yet, I'm not eighty-three."

I remember thinking that surely my disability case and health problems would be over by the time I was thirty-three, and being upset when it didn't work out that way. Now I'm focused on the number thirty-six, which will be my birthday this year. If these new drugs continue to work, I 'might' just pull my wish off. I have the weird idea in my head of some sort of thirty-six year symmetry, whereupon after this birthday I'll have a thirty-six year long golden age where everything works out for a change. As if I will finally be rewarded for my endurance.

36 + 36 = 72? Well, yeah, but maybe it's eleven years of retirement? I don't like either seven or eleven as numbers, so maybe that means that I'll crash and burn after being successful for so long? My calculations are incomplete.

A couple of weeks after Chad did his voodoo, he was fired for assaulting a customer in the parking lot. I never saw him again.