I lived in a college town for the better part of 6 years of my life. It was during a dead season, the summer time, when I picked up a job at a convenience store working the overnight shift. I remember what the manager told me when he described the football weekends, when he talked about the spoiled students on Daddy's payroll, he asked me if I had the balls to stand up to them, if I’d ever been on the other side of the counter.

At the time, I had never been (on the other side). I was never on Daddy's payroll, but I was far from working my way through college. I'd been on the side of the counter that usually harasses the douche behind the register, stealing gum, buying cigarettes, asking where the barbecue Fritos were located. I was green and the old man (manager) could tell. I enjoyed the overnight shift, it was slow. Especially, while it was a ghost town. My main responsibility was to make sure the coffee was fresh. Drunk people would come in for about an hour, from 2 until 3, and they were usually harmless. I loved the job and some random coeds dug my style. Afterall, I had the good reefer, and I was usually chill.

I quit the job once the real semester started. Like most things in my life, it was very abrupt. My friend was having a big party where a girl who I had not seen in a few years, but still thought about frequently, was supposed to attend, and I thought that she took precedence over some bullshit job paying 8 bucks an hour. Looking back, it was a mistake. I never even saw the girl that night (got too drunk) and let down the old man. He taught me a lot on our twelve or thirteen shifts together. He was a well traveled, bitter, brilliant man who hated twentysomethings, but for some reason he liked me.

I never much thought of the old man, except when I was at a busy bar. Or at a dunkin donuts with a line out the door, a gas station with a line, or a stop on a highway that was too crowded. Any establishment that you could tell was usually dead, except someone didn't show up for work, and an old gentile man was working too hard. The other side of the counter was a cruel world, I was there once but it wasn't for me, I didn't have the cajones.

I thought of the old man while we drove from Philly to the shore. The silence in the car, the smell of stale coffee, the forced conversation and the patronizing talk of the reward at the end of the road. Stealing copper, theft in general, was the polar opposite of life on the other side of the counter. The minimum wage, steady paycheck. The easy conscience, the moral ways of a sober mind deep into the night in a college town. Compared to now, my Robin Hood ways, stealing from the rich giving to the poor *myself*. The whiskey in the jar, the weed in the pipe, the coke on the cd case... the old man, he would not approve, but he read me right all along, i never had the balls to be on the other side of the counter. I have the balls to pull the trigger though, the veins to steal the loot, and the nerve to not fold a pair of jacks when i'm looking at probable aces.

03/17/2009

Author's Note: part of the copper heist

Posted on 03/18/2009
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