I Got The Dollar General Blues

 

This morning as I was driving around running errands, I couldn’t help but notice that there was a dark cloud in the back of my brain casting a pall over my thoughts. I couldn’t put my finger on it for the longest time, then it hit me: I had to drop by the Dollar General store to pick up an item for my mom.

Uggh! I hate Dollar General, it always depresses me and I avoid going there at all costs.

Smelling the abundance of designer imposter perfumes, dusty clothes made in Bangladesh and the sweaty ass funk of the down-n-out as you try to make your way through the crowded, junk-strewn aisles until you get to that garish, solar-powered, resin frog lawn ornament that your mom just has to have...

... it's enough to make a gay boy strangle Lady Gaga. 

You head for the register but nearly get knocked out by a falling industrial-sized jug of day-glow pink fabric softener. Who would pour something that costs $1.29 a gallon on their clothes? 

Then begins the process of waiting in line for 15 minutes behind old ladies as they buy Dippy Doo, Barbie clone-type dolls from Romania called Sunshine Lily, super adsorbent panty shields, Latino cleaning products, Fiddle Faddle, Gold Bond Medicated power, Tracfone re-up cards and generic cola with checks (yes, paper checks). You know what they say, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger or so they say.

I groan inside and settle in for a long wait.

Hmmm, what did I learn while standing there? 

I learned that Fabuloso will get "pecker-tracks" and "monthly" blood out of sheets (as long as you soak them at least an hour first), Tracfones can't get a usable signal in the Great Smokey Mountains and that Dollar General cola isn’t half bad if you add some rum to it.

No kiddin’, most things are a better with little rum, Edna.

Say, somebody hand me some Fabuloso.

Quick.