Laughter: Enjoying the Fountain of Life

By Richard Edgar Zwez

If you want to stay clear of events dealing with great suffering, destruction, and distress leading to terrible

and sorrowful happenings tearing apart the lives of individuals or group of persons and there are no exits

to their predicaments, this is not your book.

If on the other hand, you desire to have your funny bone tickled

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dr. Richard Edgar Zwez
• Release date: May 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869378613

Book preview

Laughter: Enjoying the Fountain of Life

by

Richard Edgar Zwez

Laughter blossoms the mind.

Copyright@2024

ISBN: 9798869378613

Table Of Contents

Your Convenience, My Inconvenience

WHAT A WAY NOT TO GO

Skeleton Key

Mr. Planetarium

Everything Comes to an End

Humphrey Dompley

Avenging Angel

Still Another Treasure

Papa Joe’s Oyster House

It’s the Pits Being Poor

Travel, Not Trouble

Gazing at the Ceiling

Modern Marrying Mannerisms

The Janitor Knows It

Who’s Kissing Her Now?

ROOKIE WIFE

MERRILY MERRILY

WHAT YOU’VE GOT?

EPILOGUE

Your Convenience, My Inconvenience

The old fellow with the pencil-thin mustache took off the cellophane wrapper off the cigar and casually tossed it on the convenience store counter. Without as much a giving me a glance he turned on his heels and strolled out.

With soreness in my heart, I picked up the wrapper off my counter and found an easily accessible trash bin where to throw it away. It’s nice to have servants everywhere. Isn’t it?

A convenience store is a small grocery store where you can jump in and jump out in a hurry. What did I call it? A galley ship with slaves manning the oars while a giant beats time on a huge drum comes to mind. Why am I so sore? Let me tell you that a convenience store has to be run day and night during the holidays. Wow! I actually had a half day off for Christmas.

On a typical afternoon it was a true blessing if the customer traffic stopped for a brief pause of a few minutes. Don’t tell the owners I said that! Anyhow, it was great to reach for a strawberry slush and a fried apple pie and munch it before my luck ran out with the next customer. If lunch came I would have to make do with biting off pieces from a hot dog held with one hand as I helped a customer with the other.

But thank Heaven for those brief interludes when customers would give me a true break from my tiresome job. That is to say a break is not really a break if it only serves to allow you time to do a chore.

But a legitimate true interruption in the eternal flow of customers would be a great blessing in which I could lean back and rub my wrinkled brow. Then I could actually listen to the lyrics of someone playing music coming from some sort of customer device outside of the store.

I was grateful for this gratifying gesture from a customer. Just as I could tell every legitimate shopper, Thank you for not pointing a gun at me while demanding cash.

On the way to work at the convenience store I would notice a billboard sign that showed a policeman with a caption under his picture that noted, He doesn’t know if he’ll make it back home alive. What about the convenience store employees? Do they get paid anything like a policeman’s salary?

Are there any promotions in the offing for convenience store employees that are worth anything? Any chance in getting a host of benefits. What about the wish of an extended, all-expense paid summer vacation?

Yet I have had lots of these types of addendums in the past and even some other ones. I’m an aeronautical engineer by trade. I have worked at an airplane plant outside of Los Angeles. However, tell me what is it with this country’s employment system? First, one is asked for a whole ton of such and such workers for a certain kind of job. People get trained at great cost for just that job. They strive and study for this type of job as they search for the American dream of wealth and prosperity. Then lo and behold the industry that they hoped to retire from decides it needs to shut its door and lays off an army of people because it changed its mind about employment opportunities for a reason that favors a change due to an economic downturn or market change.

Where is the justice of telling a laid off aeronautical engineer, Go fly a kite!

There was a time when I was at the very top in the administration of an airplane manufacturing company, and I could have bought and sold any of the wealth of each and every convenience store customer not to mention that of any convenience store.

I would have welcomed the messy man, the cigar wrapper tosser, at night when the convenience store’s business was slow and therefore created the opportunity for a hold up to be heightened by the lack of witnesses.

I had a time explaining to my aged mother that I now had a better change of career by becoming an outstanding success in the convenience store business. But it was somewhat harder to explain away the rash of convenience store robberies occurring all over the city. After all, she has always asked me to take good care of myself since I would always be her baby.

Luckily I was never held up while I was convenience store manager and parking lot sweeper. I could not help but be sorry for my poor aged mother. She had retired from teaching in a private school where she had taught sticky-faced first graders for about fifty years and there was no doubt at any time that she would continue to work there until she received a pension despite whatever would occur in the topsy turvy course of business events.

So what could anyone in my family make out of my turbulent life? One minute I was at the top of Mount Olympus with the corporate gods, and then the next minute I was at the bottom of the valley working like a woodchopper trying to survive.

A fact is a fact. So there I was in the convenience store as a jack-of-all-trades. Not to mention my side job as a sitting duck.

Do you know what it does to your mind to have an elementary-school dropout approach you at work armed with a magnum pistol? Or at least that’s what my imagination would tell me.

There was a time when I was working at a convenience store that closed at eleven o’clock at night. Well, an ignoramus tried to rob this store after its open hours. I’ve said, tried, so let me explain. This Rhodes scholar smashed through the glass front door and entered the store. The sum total of the loot he took was a band-aid. Not much for a night’s illegal take. C’est la guerre, as the French say.

The darned fool broke into the store and found out that the cash he sought was safely tucked in a safe. He was completely stumped as to how to get out the money. So he placed the band-aid on the cut he received while breaking the front glass door and left.

But I was left wondering why he broke the front glass door where he could be readily seen from the street and reported to the police. Why not take a sledgehammer and burst down the back door? That was the true and tried technique of convenience store robbers.

What about the convenience store that was robbed by its own manager. He claimed that he was held up at gun point and robbed. And then later on when the convenience chain store chief investigator became wise to his behavior he confessed that he was the thief after all. Lucky for him that he was a young, good-looking lad. One of the store owners instead of tossing him in jail not only forgave him but even gave him his job back. That’s why I say that this life is a beauty contest from start to finish.

But why should I stand on a fruit box and pontificate against rascals? I even robbed the store by mistake! One midnight dreary around the eleven o’clock closing time I finished the tally of the day’s receipts and placed the proper amount in the bank deposit bag. Then I drove to the bank and let the deposit bag slide inside.

What I didn’t realize at the time of my late-night stupor was that I was depositing twice the amount that I should have. Naturally, the fact that I had taken double the amount of money out of the store was noticed the following morning when cash was needed. Since my reputation is sterling as far as honesty is concerned there never was any doubt about what had happened. A call to the bank revealed my overgenerous deposit. So all it took was the one call to bring me up to good standing once again.

While about the business of midnight dreaming, what about the fellow who completely wrecked or should I say smashed up, my nightly closing at the store. He had a six-pack of ponies, as the small beer bottles are called, and he was about to place them on the checkout counter when a disaster struck that I can remember vividly to this day.

I must first tell you that the fellow with the beer had managed to lose accidentally all but the thumb and little finger of his right hand. My question is, Why did he try to prove that he could lift with two fingers what required to do with all of five? I certainly was not at the store to be impressed. He did not have to prove to me that he was still a macho man. I did not need an accident to happen after I had swept and mopped the floor of the store as I was about to close it for the night.

So there he was doing his balancing act just before closing time. You guessed it, he could not hold the six-pack of beer, and it came crashing down onto the floor scattering beer and glass everywhere.

Thanks a lot for making me stay late at the store cleaning up his mess!

Thank you very much for the convenience for yourself with my great inconvenience!

I could have chocked him at the store just about as hard as I wished I could do with the fellow who had me on the ragged edge of insanity by constantly tossing his cigar wrappers on my counter.

I could have screamed: "Look, I am working at the store trying to bring in some badly needed bucks into my checking account. Can’t you notice that I am at the store counter and it’s not the garbage dump!

You ought to know that I love the ladies so it’s time to give them equal time. So let me tell you about point out an incident where a young lady played a starring role.

She walked into my convenience store and asked me to turn five dollars into coins. I did not suspect anything suspicious. After all this type of store is there to please the public’s needs and any whims within reason.

So the time came to show off my humility despite the fortune I had spent to get academic degrees so as not to soil my hands. Someone working in a convenience store does everything and I mean everything. This means staying occupied tending the inner stocking of the store as well as looking to the neatness of the exterior to doing the financial books. Someone has said if you do a job, do it well. And that included sweeping the parking lot. An aeronautical engineer ought to be able to excel at such a simple task for goodness sakes! Even though it means laying by the side scads of overqualification.

So I started sweeping the parking lot and right close to the entrance of the store there were a lot of coins on the ground. Now I didn’t mind picking up this kind of mess. I was glad to pick after someone thoughtless about her or his coins. You better believe it. I happily pocketed the large quantity of coins with the gusto of someone who has found Blackbeard’s pirate treasure.

I kept on sweeping the parking lot, and close to the entrance the number of coins increased in number. A customer that was parked nearby noticed my amazement. He rolled down his window and said:

I bet you’re wondering why there’s so much change on the parking lot?

Sure.

Do you remember a gal who came into the store and asked for a lot of coins?

Yeah, I sure do.

Her companion was mashing on her. He brought up not courteously the fact that he had spent some money on her.

So?"

She took all of the coins you gave her and even some she might have had and threw it all at the fellows’ face and shouted, Here’s your money back!

Hmm. That was all I could say. Must I explain that was all that I could possibly utter since I was running the store and my stating an opinion might cause some repercussions. But you can believe that my mind was racing in my head thinking about the turns of love in humans.

So even though I was down on my luck by having to work at a convenience store instead of at my former lucrative job, my good fortune still was quivering a little if not exactly going full of life.

A case in point was the discovery I made as I was picking odds and ends kinds of trash from the floor of the store. I found a wad of paper, and I picked it up. Out of curiosity I unfolded it and lo and behold I had found a twenty-dollar bill! Thanks a lot for the tip whoever you are! I guess you also wanted to give me a surprise.

May blessings descend softly on the heads of our airplane salesmen! They managed to get a good deal of aircraft orders, and I managed to once again have a job with the company. Not as high as my former one but after my stint at the convenience store, I was humbler this time around.

But in order not to disappoint the owner of the convenience store who had sworn that I would drop my job as soon as I received a high paying job, I decided to stay a while longer to help out, out of gratitude. At first I had two full-time jobs. But even I don’t love money that much! Now and then I reappeared since I let the head manager of the convenience stores know I would be willing to assist him if he got desperate for help. Also, I had become known to other convenience store managers, and they too found out that they could call on me to take their place for a time or two as their substitute.

Say, Tom, come take my place in the store. I’ve got a hot date! I’ll pay you twice the going rate.

I did this more as a favor rather than for the money.

But throughout my stay, I felt uneasy working in the convenient stores. I don’t smoke or drink liquor. Sot I was uncomfortable selling tobacco products and booze. To think that when I started working at the convenience stores I did not know the difference between a pint of whiskey or a fifth.

After I had been working part-time to help out the owner, I found out that he wasn’t satisfied with the income he was getting out of his business the desired margin of profit. When he decided to sell porno books of a particularly vicious nature, I felt that selling smut was pushing me out of working at his convenience stores even part-time. It was bad enough to put with mumbling drunks and smokers with hacking coughs, but I definitely drew the line catering to perverts.

And to add insult to injury the store owner started to put the squeeze on the store clerks. He decided that convenience store clerks who came out short had to pay up out of their own money to make up the shortfall. Anyone can make an honest mistake.

Finally, when that smoker threw his cigar’s cellophane wrapper on my counter for the last time I worked, I wanted to tell him off. But I didn’t.

WHAT A WAY NOT TO GO

I love to travel. Especially if I’m going somewhere. They tell me that there are some persons who travel without leaving their living room. They call them armchair travelers.

When I was a slender, ten-year-old kid, I was always ready to take a trip, an excursion, a field trip, a tour, or any kind of ride. Any and all