down your spine? Even if you don’t want to feel that way,
you do. For the mrst few weeks, I was straight-up repulsed
by that dead baby arm. Eventually, I moved on to sympathy,
“Oh, poor Roscoe.” And then after that, I was just used to it,
and treated Roscoe like anyone else.
His arm wasn’t the only thing oĉ about him. His face was
always making crazy expressions. You ever seen someone
who had a stroke and couldn’t really control their face
afterwards? It was like that. I don’t know if he actually had a
stroke or if he was born that way, but his mouth went to the
side, and it made him talk mush-mouthed.
It took some time to get used to how he spoke, because
his mush-mouth made him draw out all his vowel sounds
and for real made him sound slow. He said my name like it
was three different words: “Tiff-a-Knee.”
But he was not mentally disabled. You could have a
normal conversation with him, and he would totally be able
to talk to you. At times, he was even smart. And man, he
was funny. You can’t be funny if you’re dumb.
But mainly, he didn’t give a fuck. I remember one time
soon after I met him, I had this one customer who was such
a bitch. She was complaining about every little thing,
cussing her husband out, trying to yell at me. I kept being
nice, because that’s how they trained us, but she was being
a straight-up bitch. When she walked away, Roscoe came up
behind me:
Roscoe: “Wow, whatta fuckin’ bitch. I hope she getta
yeast in-fec-shuuun, dat stoopid bitch.”