Bubba is a nearly seven foot tall cashier that works overnight at Free Food For Fat F….s, with I, The Ghetto Grocer. The mostly black customers at night tend to be fond of him as he is an amateur basketball player and is conversant in their pastime of record. They do not know his name is Bubba—which would be a lot of fun—and think it is something else. One woman has christened him Six-nine. This five foot tall lady shops every night just to gaze up into his soaring eyes—an extreme case of an unrequited NBA fetish it would seem. Last night one black customer asked for a break on the price of something because he was black. He then joked, “Oh that’s right, the race card is all used up—can’t play that card anymore!”

I stepped up and said, “You know it man, particularly not with Six-nine here. You know they wouldn’t draft him into the NBA because they said they already had a white boy on every team.”

Last week on my night off a young black fellow came to Bubba’s register with a soda box that he had brought into the store with him, and one inexpensive item on top of it.

Bubba: “I need to check inside of your box.”

Mine: “Naw yo, it Mine.”

Bubba: “You need to open the box.”

Mine: “No yo, it be personal items in here.”

Bubba: “I will not touch your personal stuff, I just need to see it.”

Mine: “Naw yo, you ain’t gettin’ up in my shit.”

Bubba then backed up to the exit and barred the suspected thief’s egress. The man approached him—being like Bubba between 18 and 21—and asked to get by. Bubba refused to let him out the door with the box in hand. The man handed Bubba the box, then snatched it back, ducked, and ran by him. Bubba tried to pursue. When asked if he caught him Bubba sagely scoffed, “Yeah right, he’s young, thin, black, good at running and probably runs from the cops all the time. I just let him go when he pulled away.”

Bubba then continued, “The weirdest thing was he came back a few minutes later and returned the stuff. It was a whole seafood order. He handed me the box and said, ‘I’m a man of my word, and since I said I wasn’t stealin’, I’m returning this. You know, you’re pretty fast for a big white boy.’”