This better not disappear again, you bastard!!!!
Sunday, May 11, 2003 - 18:12

Foreword: Holy goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch, I just typed this out and then clicked 'submit' and the motherfucking bastard ass cat hole blarghaghgag gone.

As I was saying:

And so I left that place, never expecting to return. It smelled bad there, so I didn't want to go back anyway.

But the memories from that summer that aren't clouded over by that smell... those I'll always look back on fondly.

To get there, I had to walk by a haunted house, long abandoned, inhabited only by a dead parrot who kept up his newspaper subscriptions, apparently, judging by the ever-growing pile of yellowed newspapers on the front steps.

While the house frightened and repelled me, it also fascinated and attracted me, and I always walked by it slowly, wondering about its past (except at night, of course, when I ran by, wondering about its past). Who had lived there? Why had they left? Why hadn't they sold it to a new family? Why hadn't they taken their parrot?

I was 16 then, full of daydreams, interested in the past as well as the future. The world was just opening up to me.

...

And then, years later, suddenly I found myself back in that place. And it smelled exactly the same. But the people were different, the colors were different, even the name was different. It was an Arby's now, and damn, I love those roast beef sandwiches, so I had to go back.

It wasn't that bad a job, now that I think about it. I got 50% off food on my breaks. I got to stuff my mouth with mini-muffins from the salad bar when we closed. And I got three 10 cent raises during the three months I worked there.

No, it wasn't a bad job at all. I did learn how to mop that summer, if nothing else.