The caller wrote that while he was waiting for a grilled cheese he noticed there was a strange looking man in blue and purple tie dye with a clean shave and short hair rummaging through the store’s collection of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors.

The note said the cashier stared at the hippie-hybrid for several minutes while he rearranged the merchandise and wasted stores of energy, grunting and softly expressing his concern for the situation.

When the individual finally emerged from the freezer with a single pint of ice cream he noticed the strange looks he was getting, from everyone.

“Everything is all mixed up in there,” the man is said to have said, clear-eyed and smiles, to the cashier.

The cashier mumbled something that to the anonymous caller was inaudible.  “You got cherry all the way in the back, and it’s the last one.” He said, then commanded, “Let him know will you, I get it every day.” According to the note the man was talking far too loud for 1 AM.

Trying to brush him off as quick as possible, the cashier said he would, rang him up, took his money and gave him his change.

“You don’t have to tell him to fix it, I did already.”  The cashier thought the man had messed up the order of the merchandise.

New flavor at the deli: Caramel Pretzel Sandal Dora.

“No, here come look at this,” the clueless man said, walking back towards the freezer.  “You have all your Haagen Das to one side here,” he said returning to the counter, “And you have all your Phish Food together.”

It was at this time that the caller’s grilled cheese had been fully prepared, so he approached the counter and stood behind the socially inept not-quite-a-hippie.  “Look, I did it,” the man said.  Turning to everyone in the store he said, “When I say I do something it means I’ve done it.” Still smiling.

As he finally began his few-pace walk towards the exit he turned around to say, “I have to get this kind because it’s the only one the kids don’t eat.”

The caller paid for his grilled cheese in quarters, and was rewarded for sticking through such a catastrophe with 50 cents off.  But the note claims it might have simply been a mistake from a frazzled and frightened cashier.

Other customers could not be reached for comment, but the general feeling of the deli, according to the responding officers, was one of “How frighteningly socially inept.  Really, guy, no one cares that much.”

Pictured above: (from left to right) Cory's coach, Satan, Cory, during the "Golden Fiddle Agreement" auditions.

Upon questioning, the grad said before he left home he thought “life was full of opportunities as long as I take them.” He now realizes what a, er, twit he was.  Yes, twit.  The only opportunities he has now are either to make friends with the drunks who sleep on the corner, or make more opportunities for himself.  How would he go about making opportunities?  I wondered the same thing.

“Sit around,” the grad tells me.  “I can’t stress that enough.”  Cory said he spends a good 18 hours a day firmly secured in his roommate’s office chair.  “I was too poor to buy one of my own that didn’t also come with a bedbug farm.”  He said that while he did enjoy the ant farm he had when he was younger, he was not quite ready to upgrade to bedbugs just yet.

If you didn't know, you can search for "master's degree" using the Creative Commons filter on Flickr and find this picture. But you knew that.

“If you have to submit your resume somewhere,” Cory goes on to tell me, “make sure it’s to a temp agency who is known for assigning at most one day of work per week. Preferably less.”  He says this is to make sure that opportunities are allowed to present themselves. “People think opportunities come to you through the workplace.  They’ve never waited around for seven days straight allowing things to happen to them.”

As far as the sorts of opportunities that Cory has been receiving, he says they are “mostly future-looking options.”  He has been to several groups and meetings, paying for advice on what sort of educational training he should have. “I think before I really settle into any sort of ‘job’ I’m going to get six or seven Master’s degrees from the top universities in the country.  If I wait until next year to apply I’m going to be looking internationally.”

Cory says when he “grows up” he wants to be a “writer.”

“Everybody needs people to write things.  If I just keep writing until something happens to me, that’s really the best thing I can do.”

My early mentor. Known only as "Wiseman & Hat." He also showed me the path to satori.

It really was a pleasure to meet Cory and talk about his life.  It reminded me of all the things in the world that I take for granted, like food and a bed with clean sheets at night. But it also reminded me of something I was taught earlier in life but seemed to forget once I became independent.  As one of my childhood heroes told me, “So, young woman, the way forward is…the way back.”  (Quote edited for size and content.) His hat dismissed it as “crap,” but though I have never been a young woman I must agree with him that no one ever got anywhere by taking things into their own hands.

Upon further research, studies have shown this to be true.