THANKS BABE, YOU'RE A DOLL.

This girl who I vaguely knew from the coffee shop showed up one day and said she thought her mom had died that morning and I figured she was probably overreacting so I said I’d go check with her and it turns out her mom HAD died but we honestly weren’t sure when it had happened so I lifted her off the bed and attempted CPR and then ended up having to talk to cops and this poor girl’s family for HOURS as she called her dad and brothers and the cops wanted to know if the mom was on any medications or if she had been depressed and I was like “I have no idea, I had literally never met the lady and I don’t even know the family’s last name, the first ever full conversation I had with the daughter was this morning.” And apparently THAT was super suspicious or something.

So anyway that was a rough day and the next day I go into the coffee shop and the manager (who is basically never in) comes over and says “Debbie says you had a rough day yesterday.” And I was like “uh, yeah. It was pretty weird.” And then he was like “Debbie says that you handled it really well. And that you filled out an application to work here a couple weeks ago.” And I was like “I guess?” And he was like “Okay you can do a training shift today and you’re on your own tomorrow. We don’t normally hire people under 21 and we don’t normally hire regulars so don’t fuck up.” (I was 18)

So I started working at the cash-only coffee shop that was patronized exclusively by the weirdest people in town (who had all slept with each other, had no money, and had the most drama of any group I’ve ever been part of) and was used to launder money made by the owner’s cocaine sales for the local gang.

The first shift I worked alone was the next night and when I called the manager and told him one of the regulars had been chasing people out of the parking lot to sell meth the manager told me to ban him so I was like “Hey dude, manager says you’re banned” and he was like “You’re a fucking cunt and I’m going to wait until you’re alone and I’m gonna fucking kill you” and then he drove around the block about twenty times and screamed “cunt” out the window every time he passed by where I was cleaning the patio.

One of the regulars, who was a nearly-seven-foot-tall hacker and gunsmith who worked graveyard in Hollywood, waited around for me to finish closing and then offered to drive me home because otherwise I’d have to walk three miles alone and there was that whole “circling meth dealer” thing going on. I decided to take a chance on getting a ride from tall, dark, and scary and that paid off pretty well because it’s been fifteen years and I’ve been married to that tall weirdo since 2011.