Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

I swallowed a mosquito.

I’m an adventurous eater.

Swallowing a mosquito often happens to a guy whose mouth is always open.

I stumbled into a drugstore. A friend there told me he’d overheard a woman looking at the makeup shelves mutter, ”What’s the point? I’ll still recognize me.”

I changed lanes and headed to what wasn’t a dark aisle, one where a mother would warn her children not to go. It was an obscenely bright and chillingly air-conditioned over-the-counter medication aisle.

I wasn’t there because I’d swallowed a mosquito. I was there to get a bottle of aloe vera, a miracle gel I credit with all kinds of superpowers.

There was a squinting class taking place as seniors narrowed their eyes in an attempt to read the product labels. They sought relief from the pain in their fingers, wrists, forearms and elbows from all those years of pounding erasers to win the approval of teachers. Or they searched for something to reign in that chronic cough caused by the chalk dust that filled the air after pounding those erasers. They had attended schools with an insatiable hunger for chalk.

One guy tried to enlarge the label with his thumb and index finger as if it were a touch screen. We all laughed in relief because nobody caught us doing that.

A man grumbled, “I can’t find that aspirin I like. I don’t remember its name. You know the one I mean.”

He’d been to a chiropractor about a week back about a weak back. His spouse said without sighing, “Where did you see the aspirin last?”

I wanted to fit in with those in the crowded aisle, which included people loitering while waiting for their prescriptions to be filled, so I blurted out, “I have a landline.”

They all looked my way. I want to think we shared a moment. A teenager walked by and gave me an odd look. As an average American, he can expect to spend approximately 12 years of his life looking at his phone.

My wife and I have a landline. I know you’re thinking, “You lucky so-and-so, I wish I had one. If I had an outhouse, I’d put a landline in it.”

I grew up with a landline telephone because smoke signals weren’t dependable on rainy days. The rotary dial phone couldn’t text, take photos, or play games, but it could give me a finger cramp from making long-distance calls. I never once took it to school.

I have a landline, but I haven’t received a phonebook for several years. That publication became thinner each year until it won the weight-loss competition and disappeared.

Having acquired the aloe vera (the secret to a rich and healthy life), I moved about the world and joined the Table of Infinite Knowledge at a small cafe, where men, many wearing a hat or shirt trying to sell me something, revealed their innermost secrets to other men after an appropriate amount of light banter. We talked of weather, conspiracy theories, boondoggles, the lunacy of shifty politicians, the day the wind blew a 1,500-pound hay bale uphill, and whether TikTok was really a good dating app for senior citizens.

We said ridiculous things as if we were hoping to win a preposterous tournament. One loafer said he’d put a bean in his ear even though his mother had told him not to. It’s hard to top such a revelation, but snug in the lap of familiarity, I joined the friendly competition.

“I have a landline,” I said, moving the ball forward.

I didn’t get a wink or a nod. What did I expect from a group of landline owners? They wondered if I was trying to sound wise or crack wise.

The previous speaker added, “I put a bean in each ear.”

I might have topped that by saying I’d never once shopped at Costco, but I was afraid someone would ask me where I bought my toilet paper by the ton. I’ve considered patronizing Costco because Costco sells more than half of the world’s cashews and I enjoy corralling a cunning cashew.

The beans-in-his-ears guy went on, “When I was a senior in high school.”

Drat.

“In ag class.”

We had a winner.

Al Batt’s column appears in the Tribune every Wednesday.