^ My former guidance counselor Mr. Dinkle. Wink, wink^
Earlier this summer I applied for a job at Family Video. The pay is not great and rental stores are becoming obsolete, but even so, their hiring process is long and arduous. First I had an interview over the phone, which led to a face-to-face interview in the store's video game lair. A few days later I returned and took a test. It was timed and comprised of eight sections, parts of which must have been tough enough to stump law school dropouts and drunk astronauts. In spite of the woeful 25% I scored on the “Figure out which number in this 4-by-4 matrix is incompatible with the others because video store clerks have to do that all the time” section, I passed the test. Another, final interview was required. Beforehand, I passed the “tie a tie with help from Youtube” test on my fourth try and then drove to Fam Vid, where I was questioned by not one but two district managers.
Again, we were surrounded by scores of Playstation games at the time.
Fam Vid didn't hire me. My fundamentals were sound but that didn't matter. During the Q and A, I refrained from soiling my khakis and screaming, “WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?!”
Still. No new job, no fresh start. And so I groaned “Fuck this” for the millionth time without blowing my brains out and reassessed my options. In need of encouragement during this difficult time, I reached out to my high school guidance counselor: Mr. Dinkle.
Through a spirited message on the LinkedIn network, Mr. Dinkle assured me that an upstanding young man like me should want nothing to do with Family Video. His denouncement of that store for its lewd practices was so compelling that I felt the need to share it with everyone.
Mr. Dinkle writes:
Greetings, Nicholas. Fret not about your failure to get the job at Family Video. A recent incident involving my son Donny and his older friend has me convinced that franchise does little more than peddle smut to teens.
I was returning to Donny''s bedroom a Bobble-Head that he had somehow misplaced atop our compost heap when I inadvertently spotted some DVDs stashed under socks in the bottom drawer of his dresser. The DVDs were of the dirty kind. Seated on Donny's bed, I nearly upchucked reading and rereading the sick titles while I waited for him to come home from Driver's Ed. Since his mother was and remains on sabbatical in Massachusetts with her dear friend and fellow gym teacher Karen, this was a “birds and bees” scolding I was going to have to handle by myself.
When Donny ambled into his room, I had my arms crossed with stern disapproval. I nodded at the stack of damning evidence and said, “What are you doing with all these nudie-movies?”
Danny reeled backward in a flabbergasted stupor. A moment later he told me he had no idea what I was talking about. I snatched one of the cases and recited the title.
“The Dark Knob Rises. Utter filth.”
The boy's uncomprehending look persisted.
“No, that's The Dark KNIGHT Rises. The Batman movie,” he said.
At first I was unconvinced.
“What about Ho Country for Old Men?” I asked, overcoming disgust. “And Da Wang Go Unchained?”
He still showed signs of cognitive dissonance.
“But...I was sure we rented No Country for Old Men and Django Unchained...”
Donny's sincerity had me convinced these raunchy skin-flicks had been obtained by accident. On and on it went. The boy shared my embarrassment when I listed titles such as The King's Splooj, Fantastic Mr. Fux, and Ho Malone.
There seemed to be no end to the Family Video deceit.
More Stories, and Additional Stories is the name of that eBook.
