Blockbuster Girl

And he goes forward and then back.

I have this idea; it comes to me late at night. I get all my good ideas late at night to ensure that I’ll have forgotten most of them by morning. I remember this one, though, for some reason I’m not quite sure of. It’s called Blockbuster Girl because it starts off in Blockbuster, and yet again, I’m not sure why.

It involves a guy who wakes up one morning and drops everything to see the world. And he starts with Blockbuster Video, because, well, you’ve got to start somewhere. And he browses the videos and comes upon an employee, and he looks at her and at the thousands of videos in the store and then back at her in her blue vest. And he asks her, quite suddenly, if any of the thousands of movies in the store are terrible.

The girl is, obviously, confused but because she’s wearing a blue vest she remains polite. The guy keeps picking movies off the shelf and putting them down somewhere else. I’m not really sure why. She looks at him and tells him to stop, tells him to go away, this crazy man. The guy asks her why it matters if he moves the videos, and again asks her if any of the movies in the store are terrible.

He knows what she’ll say, he says, because she’s wearing a blue vest and a nametag and everybody who wears that has to say the same thing. Of course there are no terrible movies. They’re all good. They have to be good. There are 10,000 movies and all of them have to be good because she’s wearing a blue vest and pointing out a bad movie would be taking away potential business. And no, he says, it DOESN’T matter if I move the tapes because they’re just stupid tapes and most of them suck, and people should stop bothering themselves with such tripe. He knows what she’ll say because he’s going to see the world while she’s sitting here in her silly blue vest and taking orders for higher-ups and seeing nothing, experiencing nothing. He knows exactly what she’ll say because he can finally see everything clearly. He knows that now she’ll still call him ’sir’ and ask him politely to leave and quietly call the manager if she has to, and after he’s gone, she’ll go and fix the boxes on the shelf, while he’ll already be off, seeing more of the world.

And she looks back at him and says, unexpectedly, ‘fuck you.’

He walks off. And I’m not sure how it ends.

Sometimes the guy is me. But always do I hate the guy, and always do I love the Blockbuster Girl.