The Beatles, Devil in Her Heart has been playing for the past 45 minutes in my head.

Joe Lucas lived down the street from my family. He was married to Etta and Father to Richie and Susan. Joe was kind of a throwback to the 1950s, at least to my 1970s eyes.

I was closer in age to Richie, but hung out more with Susan. They lived at 26 Riverview Ave and had a pool, which made Susan very popular in the summer.

The awful Debbie Natale outed Richie and Susan as adopted one night. The Natale family were just rotten people who lived in their basement. And Debbie was the meanest person I knew. Rotten for rotten’s sake. They were cursed.

Susan was understandably upset and ran home crying. Years later, I met up with Susan, Irene, and Kathy Grant at Maxwell’s for drinks. It was nice, I hadn’t hung out with them for years, so there was a lot of catching up to do.

We met up once or twice. Susan came out as a lesbian and found herself in a bad relationship. She passed away soon after. She has been ill many times growing up, and whatever ailments she had in the past, they caught up to her.

For some reason, I thought of Joe Lucas. I am probably older than he was when I last saw him. I remember crashing my bike into the hedges by his driveway and ruining them. He was pissed off, I was Innocent and oblivious to his ire, though I did witness it.

The thermostat at the fruit stand was at 79 degrees. I sat at my desk and was sweating. Now I have opened the window, so perhaps some relief is on the way.

Mike had a plan to take Bill and me out to dinner. It’s been spoken of since December. February 21 was agreed upon, but now Mike claims his landlord is raising the rent.

Mike paid the rent the other day, and now the landlord says increase and is coming back for more. It’s all so fishy, and personally, I don’t believe it

Some of these things that come out of Mike’s mouth seem dodgy, and this is just the latest. I could compile a list, but what would that achieve?

So, in reviewing my life at some point, I decided to focus more on this job that I have right now at the fruit stand. Instead of having a good time, which is what most jobs that I have had been. I thought I should hunker down and take it seriously.

And today I tried just that, only to find I was hasty, which caused me to overlook some crucial items.
Because other people were involved, bells and whistles were going off.

Yancey stepped up and had my back. I should not be so hasty with filling fruit stand requests. A lesson learned.

Meanwhile, Facebook and Meta have maintained their silence regarding the accusation of posting sexualized images of children. I have spent the last hour arguing with Meta AI regarding this, and they, in turn, provide laughing emojis.