Toast Ma’am and The Tractor Made Me Do It

The 7YO begins to poke at her breakfast toast, a nice deli loaf slice shaped like a long oval. She makes eye-holes and puts it on her face like a superhero mask.

7YO: I’m Toast Ma’am!
ME: Where did you get that from?
7YO: The toast.
ME: No, is that from a video or something?
7YO: It’s from the toast-es desire.

5YO holds toast up to face with a hole poked through.

5YO: I’m a one-eyed cactus!

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Probably two decades ago, some friends of mine were in an Arby’s and saw an exchange in which a man, frustrated with his roast beef experience, asked the counter-girl to, “Slap [him] some mayonnaise on this thing. It’s dry as a bone!”

I was reminded of that recently in a bookstore. I saw a sunburned man in a tank top/belly shirt and a braided rat-tail down to the top of his shorts. I’m not a fashionable person and I don’t live in a very fashionable area, so I knew he wasn’t going for irony. He had been with this look for a long time. I admire people who have strong fashion sense, couture or otherwise.

As I walked away from the aisle, I heard him tell someone, “Woo-ooo! Oooh boy that tractor wore me out today!”

I know I bought a book, but I don’t remember what it was. I remember that guy, though, and why I still like wandering through bookstores and libraries.