“Give me the boot!” I ejaculated.

Donna won a drawing to win a $900 pearl necklace.  This pissed me off.

Today was the last day I’ll work for Donna Zieske, pharmacy technician and manager extraordinaire.  She retires the end of this month and we are traveling to visit two of our children and five of our grands.

I can’t remember how many years ago Donna interviewed me when I applied to work at her pharmacy.

Oh, I was on my best behavior!  I wore a necktie.  I sat up straight.  It’s just that I couldn’t help noticing that her desk was messy, stacked high with medicine, packed onto scores of bubble cards.  A bubble card is about 5 x 7 inches with 30 bubbles on its surface, each holding one pill.  At one end of the card a label tells what the medicine is and who it is for.  Donna had, maybe 100, or so, of these cards stacked in a kind of plastic bin, plus a bunch on top.  All on top of her desk.  A mess.  Impressive, but a mess.

I don’t remember what questions Donna asked me, but I spilled everything.  I told her how I had recently walked off my last job without giving notice because the woman who managed Walgreen’s Infusion Service was a, well, a fucking bully and had pushed me too far.  “One of us was really foolish,” I added.  I told her how, many years ago, a girlfriend had given me the boot when I was 19, and how I had cried and how I had listened to cowboy songs in the small hours.

Then I told her how I had joined the Marines, how I almost got kicked out for hitting my commanding officer.  Best of all, she seemed to want to listen to my stories. I had a million of them!

Sympathetic, Donna handed me a box of tissues.  Then, at last, she hired me.

Of course, I told Donna how I’d spent a career as a US Public Health Service Commissioned Officer, decorated for excellent work under adverse conditions.  No.  Not quite.  I was decorated, but only for pretty good work under ordinary conditions.  That doesn’t sound as impressive, though, but it was good enough for Donna.

Donna, in turn, sent me to a lab for a comprehensive urine drug screen.  I remember, sitting on a plastic chair at the lab across town, going right after a truck driver.  He was a handsome fellow!  I hoped the truck driver was clean if he was going to drive on the same roads as I.

Apparently, I passed the piss test, although the nurse, (Registered Nurse) who administered the test seemed to be suspicious.  She didn’t smile or make small talk.  She used a thermometer to make sure I hadn’t smuggled in another’s urine.  She had me initial the vial of urine in two places.

Donna, as distinct from my cruel, previous boss, accepted that I was fully human.  In turn, I took careful notes while she rattled on and on about her goddamn pharmacy.  Unfortunately, I seem to have mislaid the notes.  I have misplaced everything she told me about sending prescriptions to several dozen nursing homes and assisted living places.  All of that was complicated and messy.  Very technical.

I spaced it all out while she talked on and on and on.  Then she asked me if I had any questions.  I snorted indignantly.  “No.”

I told her that that her question, “any questions?” was pure bullshit.  The answer to that is almost always no, I informed her.  If she wanted an actual question from me she would have asked me what questions I had?  Then she would have waited expectantly for quite a long time.  While I rocked my body back and forth.

I told her that I wasn’t smart enough to work for her.  I showed her my head in profile, small cranium.  “Do I look like someone who could learn to work here?” I demanded.

She answered, to my surprise, in the affirmative.

“You can give me the boot at any time!”  I ejaculated.

“I won’t give you the boot!”