Remember the Petting Zoo
My buddy Rick and I have a longstanding joke about how I will read his eulogy one day, a eulogy we cite whenever he feels unwell. I’ve referenced applying a fresh layer of casket shellac when his herniated disc flares up, when he’s been so hungover he vomited multiple times before noon, and occasionally when he spends a day gorging on red meat and fried carbs, kidding that by eating popcorn before bed the fiber cancels out his artery-clogging intake.
I skimmed past a CNN headline during my morning news perusal yesterday—“A Starbucks employee tested positive for hepatitis A, possibly exposing thousands of customers to the virus”—and was irked enough by the headline’s length that I moved on. Just as I was about to venture into the kitchen to cook some kimchi scrambled eggs, Rick texted me.
“Soooooo this is me. My Starbucks for lots of runs.”
Rick has been driving for DoorDash since the summer. He sends me a “Moment of Zen” screenshot of one daily order that defies all logic—a recent favorite was simply an order of two twenty-ounce Diet Cokes that were being delivered seven blocks away for a customer total of eleven smackers (in the face)—and it’s in play that he also sent me a screen grab regarding an appallingly overpriced order of a Cranberry Bliss bar and raspberry iced tea from the Starbucks doubling as Hepatitis HQ.
“Assume you always wear a mask in there, no?” I asked him, imagining that he was indulging his hyperbolic habits for the reveal.
“No,” he replied, conceivably while idling at a red light en route to grab fifteen bucks’ worth of Potatoes O’Brien and Canadian bacon for a nearby Jersadelphian sloth. “I don’t wear a mask anywhere. I got my Covid vaccine so fuck masks. That was the point of shots.”
“Well, I polished the Mister R joke,” I replied. “The eulogy is in order.”
The two of us used to participate in a Facebook group chat with our buddy Brock, a man who is solely my buddy these days. Rick and Brock bet a hundred dollars on an Eagles/Cowboys game several years back; with his Cowboys down big in the fourth quarter, Brock prematurely sent Rick his winnings in PayPal, but only after Rick said he would return the money if the Eagles lost, refusing to pay off his debt due to Brock’s insistence on paying early. Of course, the Cowboys ultimately proved victorious, and the group chat dissolved within forty-eight hours. (Parting words: “I don’t need to take advice from you because I’m a grown ass man” yielded “Bye, bitch!”) Twice per season, I text them both, “I’m putting $100 on our friendship today,” a joke that has never failed to get a laugh since the initial monetary melee.
Rick refers to Brock as Mister R—the R being the first initial of Brock’s wife’s surname—although it’s more ridiculous than mean-spirited. However, when we first riffed on the faux eulogy, Rick insisted that I mention how he wasn’t at fault for refusing to pay the bet. We also joke about his old co-worker, a momma’s boy named John whose fondness for wearing his Texas A&M college ring and taking calls from “Mother” while handing out tickets to customers at StubHub pickup locations earned justifiable mockery, along with a former boss named Craig who once gave Rick a pet rock with the word LISTEN engraved on it. Covid surprisingly never upped the ante, but the hepatitis A reveal pushed Rick to a startling level of eulogy concern.
“I have a lifetime retainer on the petting zoo I will have at my service,” he told me, introducing a new angle. “So, we are golden.”
While I was at work, he substituted the typically lethargic “Moment of Zen” by sending a screenshot of a local joint home to one of his pickup orders named Keep It Shrimple.
“Think you gave everyone there some Rickatitis?”
“No, I’m not overly worried. I’ll go get a hep A shot this week just to be safe. Probably. Call the County Health Dept. tomorrow for guidance.”
Having recently become enamored with creating my own memes, I sent him one of Charlie Pace from the TV show Lost—a mutual favorite reference point when we jointly partake in absurdity benders—with the caption “Remember the Petting Zoo.” After a sidebar concerning a suburban San Francisco Nordstrom store being ransacked, I deferred from further comment about the looting because I was adding fresh details to the eulogy.
“Make sure John attends,” Rick insisted. “I need to have all of the players in attendance.”
“He is but we have to subliminally insert two images of Johnny Football into the slideshow,” I commented about former Texas A&M football player Johnny Manziel.
“No. No slideshows.”
“Also, one image of PJ [another former boss] at a gloryhole. I didn’t make the rules, Katharine Hepatitis-A did!”
“That will distract from the petting zoo.”
“Thirty-three percent of the slideshow is promotional petting zoo content. Got us a sweet deal. Your father was pumped.”
“Figures that if Covid Dick”—another recent inane riffing topic that included Rick writing imitation lead-ins for Tucker Carlson to read about the dark side of brothel vaccinations—“didn’t kill me then hep A would be the culprit! Natural pivot.”
Sometimes I think about all of the hours Rick and I have spent texting one another nonsense, never unsatisfied in the moment by the stupid laughter it generates. Wouldn’t it be great to bet him one hundred dollars that he will defeat hep A, especially since a loss means he conveniently doesn’t have to pay? Then again, I’d immediately have to edit the only master copy of the eulogy, but for the first time without his input. Should I have imagined what it would be like if it comes full circle? Nah. Time to go feed the goats on Zoom, but first I’ll snag a box of Carter’s Little Liver Pills from Uber Eats. At least the competition most likely don’t have the ‘itis. Bah.