lame

It's 12:30 AM and I'm driving home from drillin' like a villain. I've been up since 3:30 AM. My energy is finally wearing thin, so in Hawarden I stop for coffee. Corner Kum-n-Go, pretty standardly ghetto at first glance.

But..yeah. Not standard even a little. This parking lot is FULL. At 12:30 in the morning. In Hawarden, Iowa. Completely full. I get out of my car, still all decked out in dress blues (not enough ambition to change before I left), and witness an interesting phenomenon. There are high schoolers. Swarms of them. These are not average high schoolers. They are a strange hybrid of gangsta/punk rock - baggy clothes and chains and sideways-facing hats mixed with thick black eyeliner and bleached-blonde hair over six-inch dark roots.

About eight of them walk out as I walk in. About fifteen remain inside. I enter with a look that probably reads a mix between "don't-mess-with-me-I've-been-in-these-heels-for-sixteen-hours," and blatant confused curiosity. At any rate, the once-bustling establishment turns stone silent as soon as I enter. These kids, I swear, have no shame at all. They stare. The WHOLE TIME I'M THERE.

I focus my energy solely on not tripping and falling on my face, which would be neither unexpected nor lacking in dramatic effect. Surprisingly enough I succeed in walking to the coffee machine, pouring coffee, and walking to the cash register without any serious disaster. I pull out a dollar bill from my pocket, and as I unroll it, a squishy turquoise earplug from my C23 flight falls out. The cashier (of whose gender I'm still uncertain) looks at it. And looks at me. I look back. And at the earplug. And at fifteen gangsta punks still staring. And back again.

"You'll be needing that."

"Huerrm" (grunt? laugh? cough? the world may never know) "yeh."

"Later."

"...yep."

the end.