Once in a while I think back to all the days I toiled at Dairy Queen, and every now and then I recall a fellow associate who briefly joined me in my lactose friendly environment. He stands in my mind as the strangest human I have ever encountered in all my years of working in menial retail.

On his first night I asked him what his name was. Matt, but call him Frodo, as in Lord of the Rings. Hm. He even wore a gold ring around his neck with the inscription from the movie. He liked dragons and that weird Japanese anime porn. Our manager then proceeded to show him how to dump the near boiling water out of the hot dog machine into the sink which splashed all over Frodo's arm. "It's ok, I like the pain," he said.

It was obvious that Frodo had some sort of problem but in a quest for that which is politically correct we were to give everyone a chance at Dairy Queen. When the lines got too long and the store too hectic, the rookie would go outside and bang his head against the brick wall until he had calmed down. He talked about the thirteen year old girl for whom he had feelings, adding that her parents didn't approve of her dating a sixteen year old. Frodo used to make clay figurines at home, bring them in, and place them on all the registers. Once he made me a hamster which shattered into pieces when a customer accidentally knocked it on the ground. This sent the Frodo into a frenzy; he started muttering about what he needed to do to fix his clay companion. On once occasion he made a comment about how his "mom used to be really hot when she was young." I replied with something which probably was not the most appropriate, but come on, he just opened himself right up to it. My remark angered Frodo and he told me he was going to take an ice cream scoop, beat me over the head till blood was pouring out, then shove the scoop down my throat till I choked. Such was life until I noticed Frodo's absence for about a week, and upon inquiring I learned my manager had told him he was not ready for society and had fired him. Finito.