Someone Else's Awkward: Ice Bullets

My first "real" job was during the summer between Junior and Senior year of high school.  My mom got me a job at a marketing firm, counting the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" McDonald's scratch-and-win game pieces.  Literally counting them, to make sure the number of cards matched up with the amount of reimbursement each McDonald's franchise was requesting.  By the end of the day my hands were bright silver.  I looked like I had slow-spreading Tin Man disease.

Despite the lack of brain function needed to complete this job I was far and away the youngest employee.  There were a bunch of college guys (all of whom I had crushes on, of course), one weird woman with visible breast tattoos, a wise middle-aged black woman (some stereotypes are true) and a crazy man with one eye (maybe most stereotypes are true).  While we counted scratch-and-win tickets we had little to do but talk.

Which is how I got to know A LOT about crazy-one-eyed-Jack.  I don't actually remember his name, but Jack sounds fitting, doesn't it?  Crazy-one-eyed-Jack claimed he lost his eye in a game of lawn darts with his brother when he was five.  This could be true, but probably was not.  Crazy-one-eyed-Jack claimed he used to be a male stripper.  He claimed it all started when he was working as a pizza delivery guy and tried to deliver a pizza to a bachelorette party.   He claimed they begged him to strip for them because their stripper had cancelled.  This is almost certainly not true.

But my favorite fact I learned about crazy-one-eyed-Jack was his "murder plan".  One day he came to work, made himself an Easy Mac breakfast (all he ate was Kraft Easy Mac) and announced he had come up with the perfect "murder plan".  All he needed was one thing.  An ice bullet gun.  This gun would shoot bullets made of ice, so by the time the police arrived the bullets would have melted and there would be no evidence.  No one knew what to say to this, so finally I asked "Won't the police just look for the guy with the one-of-a-kind ice bullet gun?"  A very awkward silence followed this question, but for once it wasn't because of what I'd said.

To this day, if I hear a noise in the dark of night I fear it may be crazy-one-eyed-Jack and his finally perfected ice bullet gun.