I am in Scotland Neck aka “the NECK” OCTOBER 6th and 7th 2002

I have moved on to Tarrboro. The only thing I knew about Tarrboro is the significant flooding that happened in 1999 with Hurricane Floyd. My parents were living in Carrboro in 1999 and all of our family that lived up north kept calling to check on us confusing Tarrboro for Carrboro. The best thing about Tarrboro so far is that I get to live with Shannon Kane. We share a room with side-by-side single beds. She started cracking up one night when we were talking before bed when she realized our room set up was just like Bert and Ernie. In between giggles she said, “we ARE Bert and Ernie”! Well, Ernie and Bert if they lived with a PA from Duke that always has a pint of Haagen-Dazs Rum Raisin in our freezer.

I commute to Scotland Neck or Scrotum’s Neck as it was so lovely renamed by my friend Sean. I am working in a 100 plus year-old pharmacy that is run by a father/son duo. My preceptor is the son and a third-generation pharmacist, but I spend a lot of my time looking at charts in a nursing home. It is tedious and depressing work and yet another aspect of pharmacy that I couldn’t see myself doing in the future. The pharmacy supplies medication to the nursing home so sometimes I get a break from the charts to fill bubble packs for the nursing home residents. It feels like another cultural experience being here more than anything. There is a barbeque stand that everyone goes to, and it is open just once a week on Fridays. I have heard more than one person say that it is run by the town prostitute which is very intriguing. I pack my lunch everyday so I have not been, but I have a feeling I will have to check it out before I leave. The other unique thing about this town is that they allow you to park in the middle of the street. The only other place on earth I have seen that done is South Philly. Two places that could not feel further apart are tied by a need to park in a way that feels and looks illegal.

I seem to feel at home here and maybe it is because of Shannon or that the people are so welcoming or maybe I am just getting used to living like this. I am a nomad on this wacky pharmacy pilgrimage. I travel a lot in my silver Honda Civic and end up staying in one place for less than a month at a time. I love that Shannon travels around with a sewing machine in her rear Honda window. I on the other hand have a bobble head collection of NSYNC slowly being obtained by different Dollar Generals. I am still missing Chris Kirkpatrick. We are just trying to get through this as best we can and some of us need sewing machines and others need the support of seeing the bobbing heads of most of the members of NSYNC.

I look forward to the weekends. Time seems to be doing crazy things, and I think about time being relative a lot more now. The pharmacy itself is stuck in a different time. I ask if I can purchase some post cards that they have for sale at the front of the pharmacy and one of the technicians tells me I can just take them and that no one has purchased one in the 25 years since she has been there. The technician was shaving her face with a blue disposal razor in the mirror that is behind the register before I asked about the postcards. I have never seen a female do that before and certainly not in public and definitely not at work and I was staring. I didn’t mean to interrupt, but she didn’t seem to mind and by way of an explanation she just said she had a date that night. Well, you look beautiful I replied. I hope you have fun.

When I asked where the bathroom was, I was told that the bathroom to the pharmacy is downstairs and the swinging door makes a chirping noise when it is swung open. As you proceed down the stairs each step causes the stairs to creek and sink lower into the floor. As the final step is reached I, being tall, need to duck down. The 79-year-old pharmacist that showed me to the bathroom said that in his many, probably hundreds, of trips down the stairs he has tried to move that beam with his head several times. He said I have to be careful because I am tall like him. My first trip to the bathroom came with a personal tour complete with flushing instructions. “If it clicks you are in trouble. Good luck. There is no hot water to wash your hands. Sorry”. The bathroom floor is white which is in stark contrast to the dirty basement floor around it. The bathroom is also elevated which makes me think of the castles in Austria where the toilet was elevated and looked out of place with its surroundings. It takes one stair to climb up to reach it and as you are sitting on the toilet it is possible to hear every step each person makes above you. There is a hanger above my head to the right sticking out of the wall. I am not sure what its role is there, it wasn’t mentioned in the tour, but I am sure it is crucial to the structure of the building. I resist the urge to pull it out each time it catches my eye.

My days at the nursing home go by so slowly it makes me think more about time not existing. Maybe because I am surrounded by so many people just waiting to die. I will be sitting there looking at a chart and a man in a wheelchair will say please just get a gun and shoot me over and over and over. I was sitting in the “The Parlor” of the nursing home today. I was reading charts and enjoying the quiet that came from being away from the residents in waiting when a man came into the room. I knew he didn’t work there. He asked me, “when are visiting hours?” I told him I was new and didn’t know. We talked about why I was there and then why he was there. I looked back down at my chart to signal the end of our conversation, but he wanted to know more. Then out of nowhere he says, “do you want to go out?” I was shocked into silence then looked into his eyes and realized that I needed to open my mouth and give an answer. “Sure”. I didn’t have a reason not to. So, I got his number and he gets mine. He may call but I won’t call him. I am suspicious of guys who visit their uncles completely unaware of the actual visiting hours on a Monday morning in Scotland Neck.