He buys a Starbucks Triple Espresso and pays attention to the amount the man behind the counter charges him. He sticks his card in the reader and looks at the amount and presses the accept key and leaves.
In the car he tells the other guy, “Yeah, he charged
me $2.99 this time but I know last time it was $3.25.”
“Yeah, he forgets tax or something. One time he
charged me a whole $3.50,” the other guy says.
“Damn,” he says. He laughs. “You really got ripped off
that time.”
“Yeah.”
He tells the other guy he’s feeling cranky and the other guy says, “Yeah. You maybe just need to eat. Like, a lot of times when you think you’re angry about something you’re actually just hungry or tired or something.”
“Yeah, I haven’t eaten much today,” he says.
“What have you had?”
“Just like some chips and stuff.”
“You should have a protein bar or something,” the
other guy says.
“Yeah, I might.”
“Also,” the other guy says, “in stoicism there is this
concept of just allowing things to be versus resisting them. There was this guy
who was going to be put in prison and he said something like, ‘you might put my
body in prison but not me.”
“Heh,” he says, “that’s really cool.”
“Yeah, like anyone who angers you has conquered you.
You might not like hearing that.”
“No. It’s true,” he says.
“Yeah. Like you can choose to react differently, I
guess, is kind of the message. Anger is more like a symptom. It’s like a
stomach ache.”
“Wish it would go away,” he says.
“Let it,” the other guy says gently while looking at
him.
“Not sure it’s like all that easy for me though,” he
says.
“I know. But maybe it helps to think of it that way.
Like that you’re choosing it over something else and you can choose something
else. Like to eat a protein bar. Or you could think about things you like.”
“Yeah. I sometimes act like my thoughts choose me and
I don’t choose my thoughts. But I guess that isn’t true.”
“Yeah, it’s hard though,” the other guy says.
“Oh wait, are you flushing those urinals?” the other
guy asks.
“Oh, no, I was just acid washing them.”
“Yeah, hold on. Watch this. After I acid wash, I take
my bleach bottle like this, boom, I hit the handle with the bottom of my bottle
so I don’t touch it.”
“Boom,” he says.
“Executed,” the other guy says.
He drives to McDonald’s and orders a couple of breakfast sandwiches.
He waits in line to give them his credit card and then
he pulls forward and waits in a parking space for them to deliver him a bag
with two egg and sausage sandwiches, two hash browns, and a Diet Coke.
A man sweeps the parking lot.
“What up, sweeps,” he thinks to himself and he laughs
about that, at the idea of someone giving people off-the-cuff nicknames like
that.
He drives with the other guy to the gas station. They both nod to the man behind the counter who ignores them and looks at his phone and they browse the refrigerator units before selecting a couple of Starbucks Triple Espressos with guarana and B vitamins and a couple of protein bars.
He checks his things out by holding them with the
bar code facing the man behind the counter. The man behind the counter scans
them through a glass pane and then he sticks his credit card in the reader and
the guy asks him, “Debit or credit?”
He says, “Credit,” and then presses the accept key and
takes his coffee and protein bar and waits by the door while the other guy buys
his things.
“It’s weird,” the other guy says after they’re back in
the car. “He charges me a different amount for my protein bar every time.”
