Hurting, Singing, Forgetting

Sunday 11AM, Walgreens Pharmacy, Upper East Side

I am third in line at the pharmacy window and I pull out my earphones as the woman being served says to the clerk, "I wouldn't ask you, but it's just that the pain is so bad!"

The clerk looks uncomfortable and says, "Yeah...well, um...I guess you'd just have to, you know, look in the phone book and call Planned Parenthood and see what they say and whether it's, you know, bacterial or what have you."

I don't know and I don't want to know.

Fortunately, I don't have very much time to ponder First Customer's gruesome problem because I've just become aware that Second Customer has a giant parrot sitting on her shoulder. In the Walgreens. On the Upper East Side. Usually you only see the Parrot People walking around at street fairs and at Pride. I wonder if the Parrot People are friends with the Snake People you always see at the same events? Or maybe it's like a Bloods and Crips thing and the Snake People have their turf and the Parrot People have their own?

I don't have very much time to ponder that situation either, because as Second Customer steps up to the window, her parrot lets loose with a very loud and very uncanny rendition of a hit song from 1994.

"Yeaaaaaaaah BABY! I like it like THAT!"

And then it's my turn and I no longer have any idea why I'm standing there.
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