Brittany Meets Some Colorful Characters

Brittany sent her dad a picture from her phone of a bouquet of flowers a young man had sent her. She said his name is Sexy Steve.

John immediately texted her back that under no circumstances is she allowed to date anyone whose first name is Sexy!

And he meant it.

Yes she’s met some characters in western North Carolina this summer! Like the man she checked in to the hotel where she works who was flossing his teeth at the desk the entire time! Or another who demanded a refund for his room when a storm knocked out the satellite TV, but decided to stay when she told him she was baking cookies for the guests and he asked if he could get a glass of milk with his.

One nice couple checking in for Western’s student orientation was from Hickory. When she told them she was also from Hickory they looked at her nametag and the husband turned to his wife and said, “This is BRITTANY! The one we’ve been reading about in the paper for months! We know all about you!” And proceeded to have a long discussion like old friends.

Most of the really colorful folks are the ones she meets at her gas station/convenience store job though. There’s an old man who sells knives off the front of his red pickup truck in the parking lot everyday. He walks around with several thousand dollars in his shirt pocket and brings his little dog into the store setting him right up on the counter to show how he can play patty cake.

Brittany says she smiles the whole time and then when he leaves gets a spray bottle of bleach and cleans the counter because they also sell food from the same counter. And live bait. One person buys a dozen donuts, the next a dozen crickets. Real crickets! She won’t go near them. She and the girl she works with have a deal that Brittany catches the minnows (also bait) and the other girl handles the crickets. Even so, she says she is really going through a lot of antibacterial soap!

Apparently everyone in town runs a tab at this place. The first day she worked there a little kid came in for some soda and said, “Put it on muh dad’s tab.” Not having been told anything about tabs she wrote down the name and amount and opened a drawer to put it in so she could ask her boss about it later – and saw about 300 other pieces of paper with people’s names and amounts written on them!

When we visited her a couple weeks ago we did stay in the hotel where she works, one eye out for flossers. We also went by the Subway, her third job, to meet her co-workers there, but passing by the convenience store on our way to a hike we didn’t stop. Not for donuts, not for bait. Too many stories, too much information. We did however leave her with two bottles of antibacterial soap we had been carrying around in the car. As her mother it was the least I could do.