today

It's a fairly typical lunch break: McDonald's. Two cheeseburgers meal with no cheese, large sized. Dr. Pepper. Occasionally I get burned out and it's all I can do to choke my burgers down, but today they're tasty enough for the price and convenience. I'm still chewing three fries when I hear someone speak. I look up from the front-page USA Today article I'm reading about the Patreus hearing in Congress to see a blondish woman in her mid-to-late-forties. "Do you have the puzzle?" she's just asked and it takes my brain a second to sync up. At first I think she's asking if we have any puzzles at Toys "R" Us since people at McDonald's often see my uniform and ask me such questions. I start to mumble something along the lines of, "Which puzzle..." but sensing my confusion she repeats her question, "Do you have the puzzle? It's in the 'Life' section" and this time she points towards the disarrayed stack of newspaper on my table. The woman is wearing a camoflauge baseball cap and a white tank top and when she opens her mouth to speak I notice that she's missing all four of her top-front teeth. I realize that she must be referring to the crossword puzzle and, being the stereotyping semi-elitist that I am, I wonder if she's smart enough to actually fill in the right words or she just makes stuff up. As I hand her the middle pages of the "Life" section, I notice that I'm giving up what could be a slightly interesting article about the big Kanye West/50 Cent showdown, but I probably won't lose any sleep over it. Thinking the transaction is over, I look back down, but the woman continues talking. "I love the puzzle. My husband and I fight over it. My son used to watch 'Blues Clues' and he'd always say, 'A clue! A clue!,' but now he's leaving for Iraq tomorrow." She spits all of this out without a pause and I'm taken a bit off guard. "Oh wow," I manage to get out. "I tried to talk him out of it, told him to join the Coast Guard or the forest rangers or the Navy or something instead," the woman says. "There's a lot of people who are pretty gung-ho about the whole thing," I respond. "Pray for Michael" she commands me and I'm not sure whether I should tell her I will because I do, in fact, pray or not answer since I want to be honest and I'm afraid I might forget. I mumble back that I will and say a quick prayer in my head as she continues talking. "He's my little Stinky..." she says, "Do you know why we called him Stinky? Because when he was first potty training he fell in the toilet." "I'll bet he doesn't like that nickname," I say. The woman mutters something back that I can't really hear as she walks away with her puzzle.