Brady C. Mallory

My right hand firmly grasped a medium-sized coke cup filled to the top with a condiment that played, to my surprise, an intricate part of an otherwise mundane Thursday night. However, before you guess why this cup was in my hand and why my eyes were aglow with white-hot hatred, I have to start at the beginning.

When they walked in, I could tell something was not quite right about this couple. Other than the fact they looked like the epitome of favorable Jerry Springer guests, I got a whiff of something very special about these two; what the French call a certain je ne sais quoi. It turns out that smell was actually cheap vodka, quite possibly Burnetts, which told me they were drunk. Despite that voice of reason, the one that sounds like Bea Arthur, telling me otherwise, I let them into my place of employment.

Minutes later, a co-worker interrupted me from my very important managerial duties, which at that point consisted of me tracing my hand. I hate to spoil the surprise, but my deductive reasoning tells me that I intended on turning it into a turkey. Before my pen could make the strokes that would be the beak, my co-worker said she got yelled at because we did not have any tarter sauce.

Thinking she was exaggerating, I walked over and politely asked the couple if I could help them with anything. No sooner had I asked, a stream of profanities came out at me and gave me a proverbial slap in the face. Using what my mother taught me, I was very accommodating, respectful and sincerely kind. I offered everything from a free dessert to picking up some tarter sauce from down the street. As soon as I was told that I was full of ? something, I felt something snap inside. The gentle ethereal spirit inside me was gone. A new spirit of rage had risen from the depths of my soul. This person that I have turned into from time-to-time has the power to tear a person apart and reduce them to tears. I have a name for this guy, the one who yells and asks questions later. I like to call him Bob Mallory, which is not-so-ironically the name of my father.

There are many differences between dad and I, coupled with similarities. While I do not have a mustache, nor a troupe of yellow labs that I am obsessed with, I do occasionally have his hostile temper that is usually reserved for telemarketers and our cell phone company. I pivoted and walked away from the table, gritting my teeth. I opened the door to my place of employment and felt a cool rush of air as I stomped down the street. I went into the neighboring business and requested a beverage cup full of this condiment responsible for my damnation. Yes, my mom and many others have battled cancer, many friends of mine have lost parents and my best friend from high school was paralyzed from the neck down. Somehow, the world kept turning for the aforementioned people, but this moron clearly would not live without this container of cholesterol.

I made it back to my place of employment. My co-workers were in front of me and in my peripheral. They saw the crazed-anger burning in pupils, a look of malevolence only likened to Courtney Love or Sean Penn on a binge. They dropped their jaws, and with quick yelps of injured animals, jumped out of my way. I made it to the table and slammed the cup in front of my persecutor causing the pickle-saturated mayonnaise to fly up and splatter everywhere. With a huge fake smile plastered on my face, I calmly, but firmly said, “There is your tarter sauce. Is there anything else I can get for you?”