Sunday Stealing (Monday edition)

I don’t know what happened, but for some reason this post did not go live on Monday even though I scheduled it to do so.

Here we go!

Have you ever…

Skipped school?

I never skipped the entire day, no. I did, however, skip the occasional class. A few times I got in trouble for this. From the vantage point of 35-40 years later, I find it hard to care.

Lettered in a school sport?

Ha! No way. Though, the swim coach made occasional noises about me trying out for the team. I kind of wish I’d have attempted that.

Made a prank phone call?

Yes, in college. Just once or twice, though. It really wasn’t my thing and I didn’t honestly think it was funny. Plus, it was pretty damned obvious who I was, so the next day there were ramifications. Not a fan of that sort of thing.

Paid for a meal with coins?

Ha! Yes! More than a few times, actually, back in the day when scrounging together coins was a nice little windfall. And here’s a dirty secret: If you count out the coins yourself and present them to the register person at the restaurant in a respectful way, they do not mind. They like having change on hand. It makes their lives easier. Just don’t walk up with a handful of assorted change and dump it on the counter and make them count it out. (Also, it’s less of a big deal in Canada where the $1 and $2 denominations are coins already.)

Restaurants will be especially forgiving if you pay in coins early in their hours, before they’ve had a chance to build their cash supply on hand. Restaurants tend to start the day with limited ability to make change. One time at Pizza Hut, some snot-nosed teenage boy came in with his girlfriend (I actually hope it was their first date and she saw what a schmuck he was), and they ordered a medium cheese and two waters. Total bill was something like $8.50. This little prick flicks a $100 at me, when all I had on hand was fives and ones. I asked if he had any smaller bills, and he smirked and said, “No.” So I sent that little shit off with $91 in singles, and then for the next few hours every time my servers had waited on a few more tables and had a few more in tips I yelled, “Cash ’em in!”

Laughed until some sort of beverage came out your nose?

Oh yeah. In fact, I was the lucky kid who was abnormally susceptible to The Giggles, and the other kids damned well knew this, so a lot of times the lunch period was “Get Kelly to laugh while he’s drinking milk” time. Fun bunch, those.