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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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It's the Dynamite-Dave rap. I sing it to him when we're slow:
"I'm Dynamite Dave,
And I'm here to save,
Your soul.
No Eternal Damnation,
let Dave be your Salvation..."
He smiles, he likes it. Then he thinks for a second and frowns:
"But you're not Dynamite Dave...I am!"
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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The night he got fired he got moved out of his house. An altercation of some sort with his roommates, not his fault. They're crazy.
He's been staying at the Mustard Seed ever since. Not the one downtown but the nicer one out in the Foothills Industrial Park. It's one of the nicest shelters in the city, he tells me. He takes a bus in every day to get to work. He views it as mostly a positive thing, he's meeting new people, setting goals for himself.
At the moment though he's trying to find a chartered accountant. He wants to know if he can write off his bus passes on his taxes.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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As soon as you hear that phrase, be on your guard. It almost always means the person is, in fact, crazy.
But I try to be tactful...
"Crazy is no longer really in popular usage in Psychiatric circles" I tell him... "There's much better labels. More descriptive. And, hey, aren't we all a little crazy to be working here?"
- "But I'm not crazy" he tells me.
"I didn't say you were." I counter.
- "I know. But I thought you should know. I love you. And I'm not crazy."
"That's good." I say. "You know, the nice thing about aluminum foil is you can make these cool hats that block satellite waves from reading your mind...."
He looks at me. He has no sense of humour. "I'm NOT crazy...."
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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When it slows down a bit we talk. Waiter talk, about how to win the lottery - What would you do with your share of the jackpot? Would you work the rest of Christmas, or would you just piss off? About what it would be like to have a job that gave you weekends off. About what it was like to sell cars - a lot of work, apparently, although on his best month he made $22, 000 dollars. He was the best salesman in Western Canada, if not the country. About how much money you should reasonably spend on a good bottle of wine.
Basically we're just talking shit.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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She's back, the Fox, the one who thinks I look like Lyle Lovett, only now she's back as a friend of a staff member, we're all eating dinner and she pulls up a chair beside the owner. There are introductions, the owner's son tells her what a hottie she is and that if it wasn't for the fact that he's a born again Christian and didn't believe in sex outside of marriage she'd be in trouble. There are a dozen people present.
"I've inherited my father's charm, you know" he says, by way of explanation. His father looks distinctly uncomfortable.
***
Walking through and setting up the dining room later I encounter him and a waitress, Fox's friend, in conversation.
"NAMEOFOWNERSSON, I don't want you to talk to me, touch me or come near me, is that understood?"
- "Yeah, but..."
"I mean it"
I feel for him, he's being told in as harsh a way as possible, yet he's not hearing it...he tells me a minute later, unfazed....
"I really like her in a strange sexy-mom kinda way....."
***
The conversations ramble. He wants to know if I think he can "take" his father in an arm wrestle. And he threatens his father with how things will change if and when he takes over the restaurant....his father leans close to me and repeats under his breath ..."I should-a drowned him when he was-a born....If I'd-a only known..."