The Accusations Fly

My first day back at work went mostly quietly. The IT peeps are holding onto my new computer, claiming they can’t get Sametime (a Lotus proprietary chat client) to work; I figure they’re looking for an excuse to not let it go because the MacBook Pro is a far cooler machine than what they usually have to deal with. Three meetings, which is four too many, and catching up my email pretty much did for my day. It wasn’t so quiet around FAR Manor.

First, M.A.E. went into the local Dollar General to get some deodorant. Pretty simple: go in, grab your brand, pay for it, leave. Except that the cashier asked her to come back in as she was halfway out the door. She asked M.A.E. some dumb question, then called her back in when she started out and accused her of shoplifting something cheap.

M.A.E., like ’most anyone would be, was offended. She shucked her jacket and said, “Pat me down if you want. But I didn’t steal anything. I have a job.” The manager checked her over and let her go. I suspect that M.A.E. will be getting her deodorant at Fred’s (a store, not Solar’s neighbor’s cat) from now on.

It gets “better.” Some cops came to the door and started asking about the whereabouts of The Boy. Seems that some buttmunch fingered him and Cousin Splat for defacing the church last year, and the cops fell all over themselves to believe it. The case is solved! So they think. As they’re getting ready to leave, here comes The Boy walking up the driveway, getting dropped off from work. They immediately start browbeating him with crap like, “we know you did it, you might as well own up to it,” (if they knew, why didn’t they just arrest him? freekin’ fishing expedition is what it was) and “you seem pretty nervous.”

The Boy answered the first one as well as could be expected: “I’m going to mess up my own church?” I don’t know how he answered the second one, but I would probably have said something like, “yeah, getting rousted by crooked cops always gets me nervous.” They got about as far with Cousin Splat as they did with The Boy, and the latter can be a cool customer when he wants. (For the record: The Boy is an expert liar, but I don’t think he or Splat defaced the church door. He might know who did it, but that’s it.)

After a rather upsetting experience, Splat and The Boy went to talk to the preacher. As for Mrs. Fetched, she has decided to not vote to re-elect the sheriff this time or ever again. It’s only taken him two terms since becoming a Republican to get corrupt, better than average.

Things didn’t take long to get back to normal. :-P