The Story You've All Been Waiting For

When I was in high school I worked at the local grocery store, bagging groceries, stocking shelves and spending as much time as possible hiding in the milk cooler. I once got caught sleeping on toilet paper boxes in the warehouse by the Meat Guy but that story is for another post. Summer was, by far, the busiest time of year because the town I lived in had an economy based almost entirely on tourism, specifically fly fishing tourism. During those months, the town and outlying areas would essentially triple in population as people with summer homes and/or large ranches returned for vacation. One of those large ranches, the Sun Ranch, was owned by none other than Steven Seagal, breaker of bones and deliverer of cheesy lines. He actually liked the area so much that he filmed a movie in Ennis called “The Patriot”, which may be the single worst film in American history. Apparently, it would have never been seen if HBO didn’t pay $5 for the rights to air it. I don’t understand who wouldn’t want so see a movie with almost zero action scenes in which Steven plays a doctor with a secret CIA past whose daughter gets kidnapped by armed militia men determined to infect a small, isolated Montana town with a devastating virus that he eventually cures with flower pedals? Still perplexes me.

Anyway, he and his entourage/family would spend about a month at their multi-million dollar ranch home (shaped like the Ranch's sun logo), occasionally driving into town in a caravan of black suburbans (Licenses SUNRCH1-SUNRCH3 so nobody would be confused) to buy a whole pant load of groceries, all the while asking for the most ridiculous items that no Montana grocery would ever sell. On one fateful day in July, the black SUV caravan rolled into the parking lot and out came Steve, his bodyguard (seriously), his incredibly young wife, and about three or four kids ranging from about 8 to 18. I’m not sure how many were his but I assumed they all were because they all had eerily similar qualities: they were all incredibly obnoxious. The young, approximately 8 year old kid was, by far the worst; completely unhinged. (For the rest of the post, I’m calling him Ocho, which could quite possibly be his name.)

Ocho had apparently been mainlining Fun Dip and Asian Experience in the suburban. I could basically read the thoughts of some of the cowboys waiting in line as the checker rang up their purchases of every item in the store: “Goddamn, in my house, not a minute would go by when I wasn’t hitting that kid. Am I out of Copenhagen?”

I bagged up the mountain of groceries, placed them on a large, metal, two-wheeled cart and began gingerly taking the heavy load to the parking lot. Everyone in the Seagal entourage walked ahead of me and out to their cars but Ocho stayed behind and proceeded to place his foot in front of the cart’s wheels. I stopped abruptly to avoid crushing his foot, which would have certainly sent Steve into a knee cap stomping, throat puncturing rage reminiscent of “On Deadly Ground” or “Marked for Death”. Ocho continued to do this every 5 feet until I reached the suburban. As I attempted to place the groceries in the rear storage area, Ocho hopped into the back of the car, making it impossible for me to put any bags there. Eventually, someone told him to cut it out and he jumped out of the vehicle. When I finished loading, I slowly shut the back door to buy some time in case they planned on tipping me, which they didn’t. As I made my way back to the store, I glanced back at Ocho who was standing outside of the passenger door. He had peed his pants so bad that it was running down his leg and into his shoes.