I was in a group interview for a petsmart once, and this girl who had bullied me at our past job was there. We were all told to go around the circle and say why we wanted to work there. All of us sensible folks answered with generic interview stuff like “I love animals” and “I admire the help this company gives to shelters” and all that… then the bully spoke up.

I think of my life as having occurred in four parts. The first part closed with the revelation that songs on the radio are in fact pre recorded and the artists are not being summoned to the station with dark magic every time someone requests their song. The second divider was the first time I tasted custard pie. And the event that launched me here, into the most surreal and disjointed phase of my life, was this girl’s answer to the fateful question “why do you want to work at petsmart?”

And the answer

I shit you not…

“I have a reptile fetish.”

The silence after that statement… the hopelessness, the confusion, the despair in that silence, it fundamentally changed me as a human being. I witnessed cosmic justice at its darkest and its coldest. The universe is powerful, the universe is vengeful, and the universe is merciless.