Reality on a Stick

Background info….

During a recent trip to the states, I was lucky enough to have some down time to kick it with Rafael, who’s been my best friend since junior high. I mean, we always hang out when I’m in LA, but this time we spent almost the whole week drivin’ around, runnin’ errands and chewin’ the fat. I don’t even think of Rafa as a friend, he’s more like a brother. Seriously. Needless to say, it never takes long before we are clowning on each other and laughing at all the whackiness that life brings our way.

At the discount drugstore….

So a couple days before Christmas, we stopped at the local CVS (used to be Sav-On Drugs), so I could pick up some amenities–anti-perspirant/deodorant, Pepcid, cold medicine– not easily obtained in the land of little people who don’t sweat and don’t mind sitting in hospital waiting rooms to get their hands on even the mildest of medications. I found what I needed pretty quickly, but Rafa had gotten himself into a conversation with the manager, so I left him to it while I went to pay for the goods.

Fast forward 20 minutes of waiting in line for what had to be the slowest pair of cashiers on the planet. I finally got all my items paid for and bagged and I wanted nothing more than to get away from that droning music and over-abundance of over-cheap, over-marketed, over-packaged inventory. So I turn back to where Rafa was shootin the shit with the store manager…not there. So I start mumbling to myself “How you gonna make me walk all over this store again, just to try and find your sorry ass?” as I looked up and down the very long, very crowded aisles.

Rafa has a running back’s build and was sporting a (red) hooded USC sweatshirt, so he was pretty easy to spot, despite being crouched down at the far end of one of the aisles. So as I rolled up behind him and said “Rafa, let’s get up outta here.” No answer, just continued looking intently at one package, then another from the rack on the bottom shelf.

Trying to gather my patience, I decided that it must be something important and, after all, he _had_ been waiting for me for like half an hour. So I crept up closer and caught a glimpse of the package, which read “Dr. Scholl’s Freeze Remover…” I blurted out in a big voice–with the courtesy and tact reserved only for brothers– “Ah DUDE, you gotta WART?!?”

He turned around and two things were suddenly clear: 1) he did indeed have a wart, and 2) he was………not Rafa.

Doh!!

Only then did I realize that I hadn’t even bothered to look closely at his head, which was bald like Rafa’s, but not as clean cut, or his sweatshirt, which was red like Rafa’s, but not Trojan red.

Luckily, my victim of inadvertent public shaming was as embarrassed as I was, and hadn’t moved on to anger yet. As we both just wanted the episode to be over as quickly as possible, we had this surreal moment of mutual understanding that you just can’t expect to experience at the local drugstore. Apologizing and bowing profusely (he was of Asian decent too), I began my long, hurried, backward retreat down the aisle from whence I came.

Rafa had been waiting outside all along. After we got in the car, I told him the story. We both coughed and cried, and I nearly wet myself. We then took turns telling the story to everyone we encountered for the rest of my trip, never failing to squeeze a good chuckle out of it.

Good times.