Urine Trouble

 “Hey, have you seen this movie?” The speaker is a semi-regular teenaged customer, fourteen or fifteen or thereabouts, and he asks Fernando the question on a rent-one-get-one-free day.

“Which one is that?”

“This Life of Pee here.”

“Life of Pi.”

“Pee, pi, what's the difference?”

“I think you'll find that uric acid is rather different from the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.”

“Whatever. They shouldn't spell it different from how it's pronounced then.”

While Fernando cannot and will not argue against some of the abject silliness found within English spelling, he still responds in this instance with all the snark he can muster. “I'll get right on telling the Greeks they've been doing it wrong these past three thousand years.”

Fernando's guest brushes it off like it ain't no thang. “Is it any good?”

“Apparently it's a kid on a boat with a tiger on a journey of self-discovery, or something like that. I've also been told that it's much better than I'm making it sound.”

“Have you seen it?”

“No, but some year I'll get around to it, probably. Maybe.”

“I just don't want to get a movie if it'll be boring.”

“Have you seen Gremlins?”

“No...when did it come out.”

“1984.” When Fernando sees mistrust start to creep across the lad's features, he hurries to append, “This thing is a Christmas classic. It should be required viewing for everyone every year, right next to the old animated Grinch and stop-motion Rudolph, and Peanut's Christmas.”

“...It's June though.”

“How can we say that one movie is better-viewed at a specific time than any other? Down that road is nothing but arbitrary tomfoolery. Whatever happened to Christmas in July?”

“...But it's June.”

Fernando waves a hand in dismissal. “July's a crappy month anyway. Don't listen to anything nice you've heard about it. Moths and cloying heat, that's what it offers the world. Christmas in June is the new thing.”

“Fine, fine. I'll get it.”

One corner of Fernando's lips curls upwards in a satisfied grin.