The Colors Of Resistance

• Blue Sky, Not A Cloud In Sight
  
• Red Tape Blocks Refund

There was not a cloud in the sky, when I woke up at 2 in the afternoon, feeling feverish, for the 4th day in a row. I had a cup of coffee, then put the TV on to see college football, and started to feel not as sick, in short order.

I'm going out there in a few minutes..

I got to sit in the sun and sip the coffee for a while, and then I bagged up the cat food and brought it to Winn Dixie to try to get a refund, planning upon putting air in the tires of the bike and then getting kratom. I would manage feeding Harold through other devices.

If I got kratom, I would bring some with me to the Lily Pad in a bottle of water.

The juice is giving me enough energy so that I can go about my business feeling hungry, but not weak, and being in a gregarious mood. With a water only fast, you get to the point where you see stars flashing like fireworks in your eyes when you stand up. I can remember busking after 12 days of water only; feeling like I could barely make it to the spot, but then having all my energy go to my fingers as soon as I started to play. I made some of my best money that way; it was as if people were drawn to me.

"Not a cloud in the sky," I said to one of the Winn Dixie employees, as I was locking my bike. I went in the men's room and stuffed a pocket with toilet paper, then went to the Customer Service area.

There was a slightly rounded middle aged black lady with thick plastic framed glasses waiting for one person in front of her to finish. She was grabbing lottery tickets out of the rack when I walked up.

I took my place near her, and, as I looked her over, I tried to guess what numbers she was playing. She seemed to have sixes and nines "written all over her."*

"You're playing 4669, aren't you?" I pleasantly asked.

"Excuse me?" she said, but was smiling as if she thought she had heard me right, but wasn't sure.

I smiled and said: "I was just trying to guess what numbers you were playing; you look like you have a sixes and nines, vibe."

I then told her the story of how I had once gone to the lotteries' website and seen that "my" number, 427, had not come up in over 9 years, at the time I had checked; which meant that it had gone over 3,000 days without coming up, when the odds are that it would come up once every 1,000 days.

"So, I played it for a year and it never came up; in fact, after a while, the people who worked at the Unique store would greet me with: 'Not today!' as soon as I walked, in..."

She grabbed a Cash 3 slip and slid it towards me on the counter. "Here, play 427, and I'll pay for it," she said. Then she handed me a black ink pen.

I filled in the number and then noticed that I had two slips stuck together and had filled out the top one. I separated the two.

"Sometimes they stick together," the lady said.

The Indian looking customer service lady was very hesitant after I put the cat food in front of her, seeming to become a bit more cooperative after I told the story about having been in the store late at night. "She told me Customer Service opened at nine..."

I set the lottery slip aside, and put the money the black lady had given me, in my pocket.

She had initially glanced at the receipt and claimed that it didn't match the cat food I was trying to return. A closer look revealed that it did.

I had thought that I could get a cash refund and then apply it towards kratom and filling my bike tires, which are a little low; partly because the air temperature outside was probably 90 degrees when I pumped them up, but now it would be in the upper 50's when I would be riding to the Lilly Pad.

She scanned the box and then told me to swipe my card.

The lady that gave it to me had purchased it off her ATM card. I didn't have that. They could only refund the money by crediting it to that card. I could only swap the box for the same brand and variety, but maybe in a different flavor. 

So, I rolled the dice and grabbed a 24 pack of the same stuff in "Gravy Lovers" flavor, because Harold generally likes gravy.
When I returned there was a long line, partly because of me. The Indian looking lady had to find a manager to ask if she could give me a cash refund. She couldn't.

Who knows, I might be a scammer who found the receipt in the trash and then went and grabbed the matching item off a shelf on the sly...Shouldn't each individual box have an identifier on it, though, so they could tell if it had been sold?

I returned to the end of the line where an older black man waited. He wanted to use the Western Union and so I suggested he go to the front of the line to see if there might be a person other than the lady, who handles the Western Union stuff. "Maybe the manager guy does it anyways, so why wait for the lady to finish with all these people in front of us."

He went to the front, but returned, cussing under his breath, it seemed. "They must lump the Western Union together with the lottery and their returns and stuff, so 'one line for all,'" I said, trying to console him.

Since I was still holding the lottery slip, we got on the subject of that, and I was telling him that I associated numbers with colors, like green is 5, and red is 2, type of thing.

I used the example of the red white and blue striped shirt he was wearing as looking like a 6, a 2 and a 9 to me.

Then, I told him that I thought I did this because of the color codes on resisters from when when I worked in electronics.

Should we switch these so white is zero?

When I go to play my lottery numbers, I see what colors jump out at me in my surroundings, and come up with a number..

Right: Is it racist, to have black as zero and white up there with precious object colors, like silver and gold? Probably. That will have to be changed around to the exact opposite, perhaps...

I decided to kill some time while the line grew shorter (gambling that it would) and went to grab water and juice for the fast, plus a couple energy drinks..

I will probably bring the juice with me when I go out to busk; the presence of the bottle might make it easier to ward off people trying to offer me alcoholic drinks; something that happens at least every other night out there.

I'm ready to go, psychologically, feeling kind of weak physically because of the fast, which is in day 3, and the flu-like feeling I've had over the same 3 days.

"We Take This Seriously!"

When I was going to the men's room to get toilet paper, there was a rather portly couple who had a pudgy kid about 4 or 5 years old in a cart.

They were all kind of sandy blond haired with very white, almost pink skin.

The lady was in the process of getting a needle stuck in her arm as I walked by.

When I came out of the men's room not long after, I saw that one of the pharmacists was handing the lady a plastic card.

"Oh, do they give you a card, to show that you're vaccinated?" I asked.

I had wondered about that; in case I had to show some kind of proof to Lilly, who is the closest thing to an employer that I have, that I am "safe."

The guy, who was just getting into the injection seat, that his partner had vacated, mumbled "Yeah..."

But, the woman, kind of snapped at me: "We take this seriously; we already have cards!" then looked at me askance.

In the next half second, I kind of assessed them as: she was a school teacher, or a stay at home mom who watched CNN all day, who knitted or sewed as a hobby, was probably from Missouri, and played cards on the weekends with small groups or friends; all of them masked the whole time.
While her husband had a gutter cleaning business and drove a pickup with the name (his) of the business on it; and that they both went to a Baptist church that was heavy on dogma and light on mysticism, and they probably met a lot of future gutter cleaning customers there, so they lived in a close knit circle..

The little rusty headed kid in the card smiled bemusedly at me; and didn't seem to harbor any resentment towards me.

I felt like saying:

"Oh, I've had the (ugga bugga) already, this is my third time, as matter of fact. [at that point they would move away from me a bit, pulling the cart with them].
Each time it's been less severe, though, and this Dalmatian variety is just making me feel a little feverish in the morning, but after a strong cup of coffee I'm fine.

I got it at the nursing home where I work as an aide, wiping fecal matter out of the butt cracks of 90 years olds with hot soapy towels, changing their diapers and catching the virus; 3 times now; I was just asking because I'm afraid my employer is going to try to make me get the shots, even though I obviously have immunity... and I'll have to walk away from my job which is going to really hurt me because I've gotten pretty attached to the residents there. Some of them never get any visitors, and I hope I don't sound too pretentious in saying, a lot of them are probably going to miss me, that's all.."

Then I would feel like adding: The (ugga bugga) sucks, but I'm sure you've had worse bugs in your lives...but I know you've never had a worse president in your lives!"

And, then just walking away..

"...OK, except for maybe Jimmy Carter..."

But, instead I just walked away. She might have worked at a nursing home herself and been able to see through my "exaggeration."

As I was leaving the store, the black man with the striped shirt approached me and, keeping his voice down, said: "You know after all that, they told me that the Western Union was down...they could 'a told me that in the first place!"

Yeah, they could have. And, they probably could have given me a cash refund.

One other thing is, when I went to play the lottery ticket, I found that I was holding a blank ticket. That means the one I filled out might have wound up with the ones the lady who bought it for me played. I must have separated them and kept the wrong one. Wouldn't it be bizarre if it wins? The Indian looking lady might have scooped it up from where I had sat it next to the machine, thinking I was leaving the blank one..

Then, seeing that it was filled out, the lady could have sent it through the machine with the rest of the lady's considerable stack of them...

I'm going to use my free street car pass to go out to busk; that way I can sit around a little longer; and won't have to ride the bike on day 3 of a fast; even though I could...it's just a daunting prospect to consider doing so in the state I'm in. (Not Lousiana, I mean the state of weakness from the cleansing fast...)
*Epilogue: The number that came up that night was 619, so I wasn't far off in seeing "sixes and nines written all over her," I guess.