Muffins, She Wrote...

On Fridays, I get the opportunity to stock one of the convenience stores on the campus of the university that I attend.  A C-Store is what they call it.  Each week, I arrive with cartfuls of food and beverages, balancing and in bulk.  Trays of Wild Cherry Pepsi.  Crates of chocolate milk.  5 tons of Chex Mix.

But one of the most-purchased items in the store are the muffins.  Moist, and the size of a Big Mac, these muffins are the best that $2 can buy.  But wait, there’s more! With the added bonus of— (sorry, I’ve been studying non-stop for my advertising final tomorrow).

Because the muffins are so popular, they run out very quickly and I frequently have to restock the entire shelf.  But a few Fridays ago, I interacted with a man who shook my very foundations of what I thought sanity was.  He only spoke one sentence to me.  Well, I may have been two, but I sensed a semicolon in there, joining two related clauses together, so I’ll just say it was one.  Maybe this isn’t even the proper use of a semicolon, but the guy didn’t exactly appear "punctuation literate" so I let it go.  I mean, maybe he found the semicolon to be aesthetically pleasing and was like, "Hey, use that!"

Anyways, this was what he said:  He was standing by the empty muffin rack, and upon my approach carrying a box of muffins, he said:

"Thank God you have muffins; I thought I’d have to kill someone."

And at first, I chuckled.  What a ridiculous thing to say to a complete stranger.  "Kill someone…"  What a joke.  Oh, the humors of hyperbole…

But as I handed him the muffin out of my cardboard box, something in me began to raise doubts.  What if he wasn’t kidding?

And I stood there, pondering, while the guy purchased his item and walked out the door.  He didn’t seem like a bad guy, yet I still toyed with the notion.  What if he killed someone because he didn’t get a muffin?

The thought ate at me all day, and I asked myself some very serious questions:

1. Would it have mattered what kind of muffin?  He seemed pretty adamant about reaching for the blueberry one I had.  If I had just brought over banana nut, would that have sent him over the edge?
2. Did he have a specific target in mind?  This question would have been cleared up if he had just said, “Thank God you have muffins; I thought I was going to have to kill Derek.”
3. He seemed eager when I walked in the door.  Did he know that I was the muffin man?
4. What is the ‘murder’ to ‘muffin’ ratio?  Is it one person per muffin?  What if he wanted two muffins?  Or, God forbid, a dozen?
5. Seriously, WHY THE HELL WAS IT A MUFFIN?

I began to think of the guy talking to his pointer finger, croaking, "Niffum.  Niffum!"

I think it’s because his quote is not the same thing as saying, "I’d kill for a muffin right now."  It’s a common expression, which everyone understands as an exaggeration.  And even if it’s not, there’s no specificity—it could be a reference to killing anything: "I’d kill this butterfly," "I’d kill this zebra," or even "I’d kill this six-pack in 20 minutes."

Somehow, inferring a single person, one individual, makes the situation all too real.

"I thought I might have to kill someone."  Was this guy psychotic or was I just overreacting?  I mean, it seems silly to assume that Otis Spunkmeyer just prevented a small-scale genocide.

I think it was the extremism of the statement.  There was no lesser punishment for the lack of muffin.  He wouldn’t have beaten anyone up or threatened them verbally.  No muffin?  Homicide.  Assault is for pussies.

Or perhaps he assigns different levels of violence to different low-fat grain food products?  Popcorn is a hit-and-run.  Nurtigrain Bars constitute rape.  But fortunately, Sun Chips only count as indecent exposure.

I want to keep the store stocked full, just in case.  The last thing I want to do is inspire the latest "ripped-from-the-headlines" episode of Law & Order: Special Muffins Unit.  So now, I make sure I bring extra cases of muffins.  The store clerk always gives me confused looks, as if I’m demented for overcompensating our supply of muffins.  It would be too much work to explain to her that I am her knight in plastic wrapping, so I just tell her:

"You may never fully understand, but you’re welcome."

Then I disappear, someone’s secret muffin savior.  I don’t expect to receive any thanks.  It’s just better this way.