Arby's Reuben



It's not bad. 

The ticket says $7.98, which is like eight dollars.

While I was sitting there a man suddenly appeared at my booth table with the filthiest hands I've ever seen. 

That I've ever seen in Denver. I've seen filthier hands in New York and in Tokyo but those don't count. And I saw some very crusty hands on a tiny woman in Mazatlan too but I think that was mostly for show. It's hard to tell sometimes. She had a tiny baby with her and that was part of it. But still, right there at Arby's Denver were world-class filthy hands. The guy asked for change and I held up my finger, the universal sign for "hang on." 

Then pulled out my wallet which he could not see and rifled through the bills that were arranged 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 10, 10,10, 5, 5, 5, 1,1,1, and silently gave him a fiver. I don't know why there were so many bills in there presently, it just happened that way. No words were uttered after my finger went up. The most impressively effective  "shut up" you're likely to see, it comes off like a magician, because the guy is wondering, "what is this fellow sitting here going to do?" And he's in his downtrodden frame of mind where his critical thinking is already seriously damaged. Nonplussed, and short for words, and maybe even thinking I'm deaf, he silently labored off. 

And then I noticed this one sandwich and potato and Pepsi is eight dollars and in that place where we are that fiver I gave him isn't going to buy him jack shit. And that's a lesson for me, in that place where our bad judgement brought us, I really must give a bum ten dollars or else he won't be able to buy even a simple #1 special whatever that is.

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