Conference trip memory (1 of 3): Bus trip stop.

On my way back from the recent regional academic conference that I attended, I took a Greyhound bus, and like more than halfway on the way back we stopped off at this shiny clean truckstop by the side of the highway that had a McDonald's and a Subway and a video gaming parlor in it, for a fifteen minute break so that everyone could get out and stretch their legs and maybe buy food or whatnot.

And, the countergirl was like early 20s, but she had the lowest voice and the calmest manner and the dewiest eyes, and this big soft red hair like Farrah Fawcett, and I kept getting the sense that she was loved up all the time, but not in a nasty way, though all she was doing was standing there and saying "hon" and calmly ringing things up for people.

I mean, what must your life be like, to have not only that sort of presence, but also that sort of poise?!

It was truly exceptional.

And, there was this (short) (very fat and round) (punk-styled) (Latina) girl with heavier white makeup and earbuds who had been talking all the time on her phone on the bus, and she came up with her arms just overflowing with chips and pop and all sorts of fatty shit like that, and it rang up to something like nineteen twenty-four.

"That'll be nineteen twenty-four, hon," said the countergirl, as she calmly rang everything up, and just stood there exuding total presence and living totally and utterly placidly in the moment.

"Look at how I got that right," said the (short) (very fat and round) (punk-styled) (Latina) girl, as she held out a bill.

Then, she paused and was like, explanatorily, "I only have twenty dollars."