Ethan is out for the night, the kids are asleep, and I’ve decided to watch a Harrison Ford flick. Watching bad movies alone reminds me of my single days, when I was depressed and drank a lot. On a typical night I would pass out to The ButterCream Gang* while clutching a fifth of Ancient Age whiskey. If I really hated myself, I would turn on an Adam Sandler movie. Little Nicky is as painful as it gets, and I felt I deserved every bit of it.

You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you start watching Tony Little’s Hips, Buttocks & Thighs while eating and muttering to yourself,  “Nobody loves you, have another sandwich, you’ve got nothing to lose.”

I spent years creating the perfect “I hate myself” anthology for those who like to punish themselves with bad media:

You’ll want to kick off the night with a 12-pack of Keystone Ice and some Michael McDonald on the boom box (he hurts in a good way). Follow that up with the Time Life Slow Jams collection. Soon, you’ll be ready to relax in front of the old television. Pop in an Anne of Green Gables DVD and you’ll feel as though you’ve paid for your transgressions. Be it screaming at your best friend because she lost the toilet paper, or denting the neighbors’ car when you threw a teacup of ranch dressing out the window, it will be all right.

* Plot summary for The ButterCream Gang, courtesy of IMDB

Unlike most gangs, the ButterCream gang does good deeds. Their leader, Pete, has to go live with his aunt in Chicago. But things don’t go well in Chicago and Pete is changed when he returns. Soon Pete is hanging around with the wrong crowd. But the remaining members of the gang, especially their new leader Scott, refuse to give up on their friend Pete. (Yes, that’s how depressed I was.)

Recently, it came to my attention that Costco workers are drawing disingenuous smiley faces on our receipts, so, during our last few visits I put my theory to the test.

Entering Costco is kind of like going to Mexico. It’s easy to get in, but in order to leave you are forced to wait in long lines and surrender your documents. In this case your documents being your receipt that the employee scrutinizes to be sure that “you’ve gotten everything you’ve paid for”. I suspect the smiley face is supposed to make us feel better about being treated like common criminals.

On our last seven visits to Costco, we received a smiley face on five of the receipts, from five different workers. The receipts in question were handed to the worker by our young child. There were several variations—smiley face with big round eyes, smiley face with points for eyes, smiley face inside a star, smiley face with stars for eyes—but there’s one thing all the smiley faces have in common: deceit.

The Costco employees pretend that they are independently drawing these faces, as if it’s their own idea. Often they’ll act as if the thought just occurred to them, but they are pawns in a larger game. I know because:

1. They draw the smiley faces only when a child hands over the receipt.

2. It doesn’t matter which employee checks you out—if a child is involved, a smiley face will be drawn on the receipt.

3. I have experienced the spurious smiley faces at both the Eugene and Redding branches. This suggests a nationwide conspiracy.

I am convinced that all Costco employees have been instructed to draw smiley faces on the receipts. There’s no way it’s a coincidence, as Ethan suggests. Sometimes they draw it without even looking, like they’re in a really big hurry, but they still have to do it.

But there is some evidence of resistance. Once, a dark haired, well dressed young man drew a face with a straight mouth and then gave me a look that I interpreted as a signal that we were being watched. I nodded and kept on walking for fear that, if I lingered too long or asked questions, men in black would come to drag him away.

This ritual of forced friendliness makes me feel both pity and resentment. Whenever we leave a Costco, half of me feels like screaming, “You keep your damn smiley face!” while the other half wants to cover the rogue employees so they can run from this Kafkaesque nightmare.

The good news is, I’ve got a little something up my sleeve. Operation; no more false smiley faces. I’m working up a collection of the counterfeit smiley faces that I plan on returning to Jim Sinegal, Costco’s CEO. It’ll be my way of saying, “I’m on to you, Jim. The jig is up!”

Dear Kenny,

When I was about 7 years old, I invented the word dillydo, which for hilarity’s sake, was later abbreviated to dildo, and became my fondest expression. Dildo this and dildo that. My sisters were dildos and my dinner tasted like a dildo. Eventually, without warning or explanation, you slapped me for using the word dildo. That was rude. I didn’t know what the hell a dildo was. I thought I invented the word, you maniac. It stood to reason, it’s a ridiculous-sounding word. It sounds like something a 7-year-old would make up. In my mind I invented it. I should have been allowed to apply whatever meaning to it that I wanted. But you tainted it with your filthy mind. You acted like a real dildo, Kenny. Thanks for squelching my creativity.

Love,

Ami

Dear Dawn,

I can’t believe you stole Arnica’s television set and lied about it. I want you to know something: Before I left, I bloodied up the mattress to gross you out. Remember how hard it was to get the mattress into that room? Remember how I used to joke about having to chainsaw the mattress into smaller pieces and throw it out the window when it was time for me to move? I wasn’t joking. I knew it would be really hard to get that mattress out of there and I knew you would flip it over, see the blood and freak out. That’s the kind of person you are.

Yours,

Ami

When traveling by freight train, you find yourself in certain circles. I am no longer afraid to say that most of the travelers I met on my journey were jerks: people who duct-taped dildos to their dogs’ heads while whiskey-drunk and tried to steal your backpack while you slept.

There were subclasses within the classes of people. The over-30 travelers who mostly stayed in one place graduated from hobo to homebum.  The first-time travelers were “oogles.” Everyone has to go through the oogle phase; it’s kind of like being a freshman in high school. And then there were the people you meet over and over again: the Birdmen, Lone Wolves and Mikeys really add up.

Of all the Birdmen I’ve met—among them the Birdman of Sturgis, South Dakota, the Birdman of Tompkins Square, and the Birdman of Milwaukee, I have to say none swept me off my feet quite like the Birdman of Key West, Florida.

This particular Birdman first caught my attention with a dog named Bosco that he had trained to wear sunglasses while walking around the island with a parrot on his head. Tourists would take pictures of Bosco, and Birdman would pop out of the bushes, ready to accept donations. Who doesn’t love a dog in sunglasses? This was Birdman’s main source of income; that and selling crack to the traveling punk kids.

My friends and I were squatting in what we referred to as “the cardboard castle,” which happened to be adjacent to the Birdman’s “house”—the alley he had built a roof over. He took great pride in his home and talked about it as if he had worked for years to establish it, as if it were a regular house sitting in a suburb somewhere. “Come on over to my house for a visit,” he’d say.

One night Birdman invited me on a tour of the island. At the time I was bald, covered in a rash from an allergic reaction to the sand fleas, and wearing light stone-washed denim. How could I be anything but flattered?

He showed me Hemingway’s house and tried to lure the descendants of the five-toed cats to the gate. I’m not sure what his plans were, but I assumed they were shady. After failing to trick the cats, he began maniacally chasing the Key West chickens around. It was forbidden by law to harass these chickens, and yet here was Birdman, throwing caution to the wind for a good time. That’s just the kind of guy he was.

He called our squat his back yard and let us know that he was cool with us staying there. It was just an old parking lot next to a cardboard dumpster, not even a proper squat, but he was ready to set up the grill and trim neighboring tree branches if they reached too far into his yard.

During my visits to his home I made a habit of watching where I stepped, as the ground was covered in debris. On one particular visit I noticed a large pile of what appeared to be human feces sitting in the middle of the space I had come to know as the entertainment room. It was where Birdman had set up an old ironing board to use as a bar. Here he would mix drinks, ration out crack and offer bowls of what appeared to be Band-Aid soup.

Birdman noticed my hesitation and looked down. “Goddamn it!” he shouted. “I told those fuckers to quit shitting in my house!” He then picked up a tattered porn magazine and tore a page out of it. Ever so gingerly, he placed the page on top of the pile of shit and, with a grand gesture, welcomed me in.

“How chivalrous,” I thought, charmed by this modern-day crackhead equivalent of Sir Walter Raleigh tossing his cloak over a mud puddle for Queen Elizabeth. It sure was nice to be treated with a little class.

Dear Grandma,

People don’t like it when you tell them they have gotten fat.

Also, about what you said to Ricki—that he ought to go out into the woods with the wolves if he wants to masturbate. Well, Grandma, people masturbate too, not just wolves.

Love,

Ami

I’ve decided to go against the advisement of my high school career aptitude test and pursue a degree in psychology. It’s a subject that has interested me consistently since I was young, and it may help me learn to manipulate situations in my favor. And, unlike the fish hatchery recommendation, psychology is not stagnant.

As it becomes more of a reality that one day I will be providing therapy to someone, I’m beginning to question not only my chosen area of study, but the field of psychology as a whole.

Could I really be paid large amounts of money to appear to be the rational person in the room? What if a have a client who notices that I talk into a notebook pretending to record messages or that I have a collection of laminated mustaches hanging where my diploma should be? What if I slip up and talk in my racist Italian accent without realizing it? “Heya, Mary, alla you gatta dooo isa relaxa.”

Who am I to provide therapy to anyone? It seems like a sick joke. Sure, I could sit in a chair and offer vague and generic advice to my clients: “Robert, have you tried using ‘I’ statements? You need to own your feelings.” But should any of my patients follow me home one day and peer through my windows, they would see me getting up off of the couch 27 times to rearrange the curtains because they aren’t exactly even, or grabbing the excess fat around my midsection while shouting “Extra, extra, read all about it!” to an empty room.

What if this peeping client stayed to witness one of my marital arguments?

Me:    I told you never to watch me while I brush my teeth.

Ethan:   Sorry. I forgot it bothers you.

Me:    It’s very important that you never watch me while I’m brushing my teeth.

Ethan:   I apologized.

This escalates until I’m following him around the house, demanding he refer to me as “the winner.” Eventually he’ll break down and placate me with “Yes, Ami, you are the winner. Now can we have an adult conversation?” I’ll respond with “No, I don’t feel like talking. I just wanted to make sure you understood as well as I do what went on here.”

Winner of what, I don’t know; I just like to hear those three little words. If Ethan doesn’t put his foot down soon I can see myself taking out my pent-up aggravation from work on him and the kids. Urah won’t be allowed to go outside to play until she recites the entirety of Old Man River in baritone. Ethan will insist that the song is racist and I’ll admonish him, “Hush! I am the winner, and she’ll do as I say.”

I already know what kind of therapist I’m going to be. I’ll be the kind that writes down observations—not about symptoms or treatment plans, but about shoes and hairstyles. You’ll be going on and on about your experiences and I’ll be scribbling that you are wearing white high-tops, and isn’t that interesting because Billy Joel bought a pair of white high-tops just before having himself committed. And if you come to the appointment wearing a half-up half-down ponytail, I will be certain that your problem is your strict Christian upbringing.

If people like me are allowed to provide therapy just because we went through a little schooling, then take it from me, the winner: Your money is better spent on a nice pair of shoes and a smart haircut.

That is on the cover of this week’s Globe. The reason this is so goddamn funny is that back in ’03, Arnica and I happened to find ourselves at the 100th anniversary of the Harley in Milwaukee. We were drunker than 10 hippies and out of money. I had a brilliant plan: We would sell souls for a dollar until we had ourselves enough for another 12 pack of, yup, Milwaukee’s best Ice. Singing ZZ Top songs wasn’t working, and we were all out of beads to sell.

I sold one soul that night—it was John Ritter’s. I sold it for one dollar to a short man. Two days later, John Ritter died mysteriously and unexpectedly.

Somewhere in Milwaukee a short man woke up with a raging hangover and a crumpled napkin in his pocket. On the napkin was a poorly written promise: the promise of one John Ritter’s eternal soul.

And that, good reader, is what really killed John Ritter.