The Tale of the Pity Panini

Before I went to tech today, I went to the doctors’ for three overdue shots. Now, I know there’s some sort of scientific logic behind vaccines and all, but all my hillbilly instincts tell me about them is that they’re long, pointy, and filled with the type of disease you’re trying to prevent. Strangely, this is not comforting. When I have children, they’ll be going to the hippie-apothecaries who’ll be chant nice things about the sun and the flowers to heal them and hum in circles about the power and nature of being or something. No sharp pointy things. However, I will miss the band-aids. I got three. They were Tweety, pink flowers, and Snoopy. It was pretty badass.

I also got this bright idea to have all three shots in one arm. At the time, I thought this was terribly clever (I can still halfheartedly flail at things with my left arm!! I can kick stuff and maybe it’ll move!!) but after tech, my right hand had developed an uncontrollable twitch and the rest of it had about the mobility of a jelly noodle. Hm. Pair my now-badass bandaged arm with the fact that I didn’t wait the full time you were supposed to wait after those vaccines (I couldn’t stay in the waiting room. There was a scary lady there who kept looking at me venomously, like I was going to eat her babies or something.) and I was definitely a sight. I tottered out of there with pride.




I appeared at tech with maybe twenty minutes to go until lunch, so I spent that time quietly painting poster-board in Super Garish Halloween Diner Pumpkin Fest orange-and-yellow checkers, and felt useful. When it was time for lunch, it was agreed we were going to Panera.

I was so excited. I had a whole ten dollars. Besides, my friend works there now, and she told me that basically if you took Christian religion and replaced ‘Jesus’ with ‘bread’, you’d have Panera’s philosophy. This is true enough.

When we got there, I ordered a panini and some lemonade, confident in my ability to not spend ten dollars at a sandwich place. But this is Panera, remember, where bread is their Jesus, and it’s not to be taken lightly. My total came out to $10.25. I checked my pockets.




So I sat there, dumbfounded, heartbroken, and pretty damn hungry, since I hadn’t eaten and I’d just been shot up with a bunch of deadly diseases. My cashier, who was a motherly-looking, short little woman, said,

“Don’t worry about it, honey. I got it.” And she rung up my food.

I stood there, gaping stupidly for a while. Until she told me to move on. This is not in the Panera Commandments, I bet. But I did as she told and waited unnaturally long for my food, wondering if maybe she hadn’t provided for me after all and I was going to get bounced for being poor. But that didn’t happen. Instead, two paninis under my name came up. WTF? I hadn’t paid for those. I hadn’t even paid for one! But, as any good, selfish-minded girl with a magic panini-fairy-godmother would do, I took one (and made an awesome techie go get my other one) and scrambled off to my seat.

The only explanation I can come up with is that it was out of pity.

I mean, imagine me. I was sitting there, poor, and obviously malnourished, with three vaccine band-aids up my arms from shooting up or donating blood or something like that, and I probably had like a family at home to feed or something, since I didn’t have a quarter to buy my super expensive lunch. That was definitely the reason. I mean, I was a pretty sorry sight. It was humid outside so my hair was all reacted and stuff. Maybe the shirt I was wearing made me look like I was preggers. Something made my magic panini-fairy-godmother pity me, and I took that pity panini with pride, dammit, and went home quietly to a land where impossible things didn’t happen anymore.