Work Stories: Episode 75: Joke, Ring, and Paper

Previously on Work Stories, I wrote about the women that wanted my picture.  Now that I’ve put that whole thing behind me, I can write about something else that happened while I was at work once.  Or twice.  Or three times.  Because it’s post seventy-five.  For that reason, this post will be a compilation of a bunch of things from at work.  It won’t be too much longer than any of the other posts that I’ve written for the Work Stories.  Don’t worry about that.

For post twenty-five, I took some time to write about a few of the people that I had seen on the street on a regular basis since beginning to work at the museum.  This time I thought I would do something similar.  However, instead of writing about a few different people that I’ve seen, I’m going to write about one person that I’ve seen many times and a few of the things that have happened because he walked up to me.  There are going to be four different stories about this guy that I tell you.  Why don’t I get started?

So there’s this old guy that is always hanging around.  I guess I shouldn’t say always.  I haven’t seen him for a month now.  But all winter he was showing up every once in a while to fill the staff at our work in on some weird thing.  I witnessed four of these instances and would like to share them with all of you.  These are four wacky things that this guy said or did when he came up to our cash register.

The first one was a joke that he said.  He strolled up to my coworker and began talking.  Apparently he had seen her before and she recognized him.  He had done things like this before.  I hadn’t seen him prior to this moment so this was a first for me.  His joke went something like this.  “Why do all violin players play with their right hand?  If they used their left, they’d be poking each other in the eye!”  Then he jerked his left hand in a motion indicating that he was jabbing someone in the eye with the bow of a violin.  Then he left.  It was really strange and left me confused.  In short, it was like any other story I have about something that happened at work.  I was confused.

A couple weeks later, the guy returned.  I was the person behind the cash register this time, so I got the whole experience firsthand.  I was playing cards with myself when he walked up and looked at me.  When I looked at him, he started talking.  “Hey, I’ve got something interesting for you.  I was celebrating my fifty-fourth birthday last week.  My friend looked at my birth certificate and told me that I was actually turning forty-five.  I lost a year in there somewhere.”  Then he left.  I was dumbfounded.  Why did he tell me this?  I don’t know.  And it wasn’t the last time that I saw him.

Number three.  A different coworker was working in our ticket booth when the man returned.  Like usual, the guy walked up and started talking.  There was a little more this time around though.  The guy had something to show off.  He looked at my coworker and said “Want to see something?”  He pulled out a ring and put it on his finger.  It looked sort of like some sort of crown on a band around his finger.  “I made this ring out of my sink.”  Then he left.  What?  He came and showed off his sink ring.  That’s all he did.  He showed off a sink ring and left.  He would come back one more time.

I was doing something in our ticket booth but I don’t remember what when the guy showed up again.  Maybe I was staring out at the street, lost in my own thoughts.  That has happened before.  He strolled up and pulled out a piece of paper.  “Have you ever seen this before?”  Nope, I hadn’t.  He unfolded the paper, handed it to me, and said “This is for you.”  Then he left.  I looked at the paper.  The thing was a newspaper from across the border.  Yeah, I live in a border town.  The bit of newspaper that he handed me was filled with articles, but all of the articles were jokes.  It was like a local, small-town Weekly World News type of thing.  You remember Weekly World News, right?  This one didn’t have aliens or monsters, but it was local joke articles and stuff.  It was really weird.  I’m still not entirely sure why he thought I would want it.

I haven’t seen the guy since the newspaper incident.  I kind of want to see him again.  He’s always a little wacky, but it’s always kind of funny in a “That was strange” kind of way.  He also gives me these little stories to tell.  They aren’t great stories, but they’re something.  That’s something.

That’s it for this week’s Work Story.  It wasn’t much.  I know that.  I did want to share these things with you though, and I got to do that.  It’s all that matters to me.  As long as I get to share with you, I’m happy.  Next time, I’ll find something good for you.  Maybe I’ll tell the story about the guy who pushed me the other night.  That would be a good one, no?

Until then, through a Voorhees was he born... through a Voorhees may he be reborn... and only by the hands of a Voorhees will he die.