Calling Me "Boss" Is Only Okay if You Have Down's Syndrome

Here’s one of my biggest pet peeves (I’m letting you all in on it so you can exploit it and annoy the ever-loving piss out of me): calling me by some dumb-ass nickname. It can be anything: Dude, Bro, You, Buddy, Hoss, Ugly Motherfucker – anything that maintains my anonymity and makes you feel like you actually know me. (You think you know, but you have no idea.) It just gets under my skin and makes me want to yell, scream, and throw my own feces (more). I also hate it when people tell me to “lighten up” like in that god awful fucking Sheryl Crow song… JESUS. I’m light. I’m as light as a cloud or some cotton candy.

The only exception to this rule is if you have Down’s Syndrome.

Case in point, this young gent who comes in and for a while kept trying to rent this soft-core, vaguely sexual fantasy movie called “Morgana.” Repeatedly he would find this movie and bring it up to the counter, only to have one of his parents (or his hilariously out-of-it grandmother) snatch it out of his hands, look at it, and make us put it back (thanks). One day he managed to slip the movie through his guardian’s protective net and I kind of felt proud of him, like when Free Willy jumped over the levy or whatever. I nodded and thought, “Good for you.”

Then he was involved in the infamous time that a gaggle of children overran the store one Friday night and when Paul inquired as to the whereabouts of their parents, one of his siblings/step siblings told us, matter-of-factly “They’re in the bar.” Moments later the errant parent stumbled in and retrieved them, kind of like a drunk Superman.

So anyway this kid comes in and calls me “Boss.” And you know what? I’m kind of okay with it. Once I was walking home and saw him shoveling dirt in his driveway, a big earthen pile behind him. He was scooping it and putting it in a wheelbarrow, for no apparent reason. When I told my mom about this she said “Well, it’s pretty hard thinking of things to have them do. Probably tires him out, too.” Um, thanks mom. (Yes, it too gave me frightening new insight into my childhood.)

This dew covered, dirt shoveling, unattended-by-alcoholic-parents Downs Syndrome kid can call me “boss” all he wants. Just hope to god he doesn’t tell me to lighten up.

Yours,

Fluffy.