Page 34 of Finding Jack
EMILY: Better than Chef Boyardee. But you were saying how you’re a total cheapskate and wouldn’t take your dates out?
JACK: Rude.
EMILY: I kid. I’m sure you were trying to be fun.
JACK: No. We were being cheap. Anyway, our dates were sitting at the breakfast bar watching us and I decided to showboat. I plopped the noodles in the sauce pan and tried to get fancy with the tossing. It landed in my hair and ruined my white shirt, so then I had to borrow one of my dad’s and it was way too big and I looked like a slob for the rest of the night.
EMILY: …
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JACK: You’re trying to stop laughing long enough to type, aren’t you?
EMILY:
JACK: My turn. Best thing you ever bought?
EMILY: Some shoes.
JACK: ARE THEY MAGIC?
EMILY: Not exactly.
JACK: Then how can they best the purchase ever?
I snapped a shot of the red stilettos I’d bought with Ranée to celebrate my promotion and sent it. It wasn’t a fancy picture, just them sitting on my closet shelf, but I felt they spoke for themselves even without telling the whole story: that buying those shoes had indirectly led to us having this conversation at all.
JACK: I get it now. Without seeing anything else you’ve ever purchased, I’m positive you’re right.
EMILY: I am. So it was a two part question. Worst thing you ever purchased?
JACK: I saved up a bunch of Fruity-O’s box tops so I could trade them for x-ray specs. It turns out that x-ray specs don’t work.
EMILY: But that’s not really buying anything.
JACK: I had to buy all the boxes myself because my mom said she wouldn’t buy us sugar cereal. In six months I had twenty boxes and two cavities. I could have bought them at a local store for the price of four boxes. That…is the most 90’s story ever. Do they even still do contests like that?
EMILY: Ranée lives on cold cereal. Let me check…nope. Five different brands, no contests. Although any time McDonald’s does Monopoly my dad goes crazy and eats there three times a day while he tries to collect all the pieces. He doesn’t even like McDonald’s.
JACK: I mean, the burgers are bad. I get it. But can anyone truly not like McDonald’s? Because the fries.
EMILY: The fries.
JACK: Your turn. Worst thing you ever bought?
EMILY: Easy. Tickets on a discount airline to Mexico.
JACK: Without any further details, that already sounds bad.
EMILY: So, so bad. But you’re just repeating my questions. You need to come up with some of your own.
JACK: Uh…worst place you’ve had to bury a body.
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