Bob Ross Made Me Do It

There are moments when I find myself discouraged at the pawn shop. Such moments are when I look at what we call "the back wall". This wall is lined with shelves, upon which are placed items that either need to be put onto the showroom floor or into the storehouse for safe keeping and future display. Employment at the pawn shop is a constant battle of trying to clear off this wall as new items seen to be incessantly materializing and breeding on it. Many items are not difficult to find places for (cell phones, DVD players, speakers), but there are some items which are more bothersome. One such item is the filthy, over-sized grill that appeared over the weekend.

I'm sure it was a very nice grill to begin with, and it is still somewhat impressive with it's enormous stainless steel lid and expansive flat surfaces that jut out from either side of it and offer a type of counter space, but the grease, grime, and dirt that now coat every surface make it appear to be more of a prop from a horror movie than a means of cooking food any normal human being would desire to consume. Seeing this item made me cringe because 1) it's ugly, 2) it's huge, and 3) there is nowhere to put it inside of the store, meaning that we will most likely have to roll it outside every morning and then wheel it back inside every evening.

Wanting to avoid having to find a place for the grill on the showroom floor, I began pulling various items from the shelves around it. I put away a DVD player, a few cell phones, a television, a pair of dry wall stilts, and two of those cheap joystick games you plug into your TV, but then I saw one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen: a Bob Ross painting kit, complete with paint, brushes, utensils, and two instructional DVDs. With this single kit, one would be able to paint a mountain scene, stormy sea, or peaceful meadow while Bob Ross's soothing hippie voice instructs them from under his beach ball-sized Afro.

Needing to inspect this kit closer, I leaned up against the disgusting grill to grab the unopened box (YES, unopened!). After discovering the shockingly low price of $19.99, I put the kit back, seriously contemplating buying it for myself, but moved on to other tasks around the shop.

A while later, I returned to the back room and was assaulted by a putrid smell that lingered in the air. I asked a co-worker if she smelt something funny--which she did--and then asked her what she thought it was. She rushed off to solve the mystery, worried that it might have been gas. Not thinking much of this, I busied myself with additional chores around the shop. Not much later, I found myself smelling the same horrible smell far away from the back room on the shop floor.

As it turns out, my co-worker was correct. It had been gas we were smelling. When I had leaned up against the grill to inspect the Bob Ross painting kit, I had bumped one of the grill's gas knobs and unwittingly began to fill the store with propane. The seriousness of this situation was increased by the fact that we had been selling a lot of lighters lately and many customers liked to play with them, absentmindedly flipping them on while they wait in line to be rang up. It wouldn't have been too unlikely for one of them to have played with one of these lighters, ignited the gas, and killed us all. Thankfully, they didn't. But all I really have to say is that Bob Ross made me do it. He was the one who almost made me blow up the pawn shop with his irresistible painting kit that was priced so economically. What a rascal.