2001-06-21 - 3:16 p.m.

So we go to dinner, where we annoy B by yelling, Hey, Relax! and doing the hand motion. We sit outside at a new and mediocre Middle Eastern restaurant, eating and drinking mint iced tea, and avoiding the waitresses, who are inexplicably making balloon animals and showing them to the dog. Then, before coffee comes, I run across the street to a deli to use the ATM machine.

Charles Foods, it's called. Should be Charles Freaks.

I walk in, and it's a really ghetto version of the ubiquitous Korean deli. There's a gross kid in there, with nasty oozing crusty mouth sores, wearing an Irish cap and stroking a dachsund that he's holding over his shoulder. Yuck. I move past him and head for the ATM, where I'm intercepted by an employee. "No, no. Go to the candy store on the corner."

Me: "why, isn't that an atm right there?"

Freak2: Yeah, but it doesn't have alot of money in it"

Me:(wondering how he knows this) Well, I don't need a lot of money.

Freak2: How much?

Me:A hundred

F2: No, not a hundred.

Me: Ok,um... how about $40?

F2: Ok, $40.

Steps out of the way, lifts the OUT OF ORDER sign, and lets me put in my card, with which I withdraw $80, because I'm a liar like that. Then I go to the counter to get P cigarettes, where I run into Freak3.

He's wearing, and I am not making this up, a hat made out of a paper plate. A visor type thing, with the center of the plate cut out and propped up, like a crown or something. So he hands me my change, and I go, "What's with the hat?" And he puts his hands up in the air and says "Welcome to my kingdom!!!! I am the deli lama!!!"

I hightailed it right out of there, before I got sucked in and started wearing a banana cape and muttering to myself.

I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.

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