TumbleDweeeb

Another Night at Chill n’Fill: The Prophet of Unnecessary Predictions

*A Special Edition: Pop-Up Story*

   It was early Tuesday night at Chill n’Fill, and I was three hours into my shift when Bob decided tonight was the night for what he called his “Grand Unveiling Ceremony.” Through the front windows, I could see him in the parking lot, having somehow climbed on top of our giant illuminated polar bear that served as both landmark and Bob’s personal stage for tonights increasingly theatrical announcements.
   Tonight’s bear transformation was Bob’s most ambitious yet: “Prediction Bear,” wearing what appeared to be a wizard’s hat made from poster board and aluminum foil, a cape constructed from old losing lottery tickets taped together, and holding a bowling ball with a sticker of the number 8 in its massive paw. Around its neck, the usual chalkboard read: “DON’T SAY I DIDN’T TELL YA”
   The radio was playing “I Told You So” by Randy Travis when Bob’s voice crackled through the store’s ancient PA system: “Ladies and gentlemen, customers and cosmic truth-seekers! I, Bob, humble proprietor of this convenience oasis, have received a vision! But first… I must perform the sacred gateway ritual to unlock the powers!”
   Through the window, I watched in absolute amazement as Bob proceeded to perform what could only be described as the most enthusiastic and least graceful Truffle Shuffle in recorded history. He lifted his shirt, exposing his generous belly, and began the iconic dance… a vigorous belly shake combined with shuffling feet and wild arm movements, all while balanced precariously on top of our twenty-foot-tall bear sign, making the sound of a full grown man on a vibrating belt machine.
   His performance was magnificent in its “Huuuughnuhnuhnuhnuhpffffft … Warblegarblebluhbluhbluh, Heeeeerrrruhruhruhruhruh” … his belly jiggling with passionate intensity, his feet doing a shuffling dance that threatened his balance on the narrow sign, his face contorted into the same expression of gleeful determination that Chunk had perfected in 1985.
     Cars were slowing down on the highway to witness this spectacle, and I could see people pulling out their phones to record Bob’s aerial Truffle Shuffle.
   “THE TRUFFLE SHUFFLE IS THE PASSWORD TO TRUTH!” Bob shouted into his megaphone, somehow managing to continue the dance while addressing his audience. “JUST AS CHUNK HAD TO PERFORM THE SACRED DANCE TO GAIN ENTRY TO MIKEY’S HOUSE, I MUST PERFORM IT TO UNLOCK THE COSMIC GATEWAY TO PREDICTION!”
   That’s when the automatic doors slid open to reveal a man in his early thirties who moved with the aggressive confidence of someone who’d been vindicated by absolutely nothing but felt vindicated nonetheless. He stood transfixed in the doorway, staring up at Bob’s performance with a mixture of awe and recognition.
       “Oh my GOD,” he said, his voice filled with genuine reverence. “This guy gets it. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to tell people!”
   He strutted through the aisles while Bob continued his elevated Truffle Shuffle gateway ritual, talking loudly into his phone with the kind of energy that suggested he’d found his guru.
       “Bro, BRO!” he was saying, his voice carrying across the entire store. “You need to get down here right now. There’s a guy on top of a bear doing the Truffle Shuffle to unlock prophetic powers! This is exactly what I was talking about when I said don’t say I didn’t tell ya about the power of public prophecy! Remember when you tried to start that TikTok dance channel and I told you it was gonna flop like a fish on concrete? Well guess what happened? You got twelve views and they were all your mom! Don’t say I didn’t tell ya!”
   I watched him grab a Red Bull and a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos while Bob’s voice continued to boom from outside: “THE GATEWAY IS OPENING! I can feel the energy flowing through my belly! AND I PREDICT … THAT SOMEONE WILL ENTER MY ESTABLISHMENT TONIGHT SEEKING VALIDATION FOR THEIR OWN PROPHETIC ABILITIES!”
   The customer froze mid-reach for his snacks, his phone call forgotten. “Did… did… did he just predict me????”
       “Seems like it,” I replied, trying not to laugh at the cosmic coincidence unfolding before me.
   Bob’s voice continued through the PA, his Truffle Shuffle reaching peak intensity: “THIS PERSON HAS BEEN SAYING ‘DON’T SAY I DIDN’T TELL YA’ TO PEOPLE WHO NEVER ASKED TO BE TOLD ANYTHING! BUT THE UNIVERSE HAS HEARD THEIR DEDICATION TO PREDICTION! THE TRUFFLE SHUFFLE HAS GRANTED THEM PASSAGE TO VALIDATION!”
   The customer approached the counter with something approaching religious fervor. “Miss, that man up there—is he some kind of oracle? Because I’ve literally been documenting predictions for months, and everyone thinks I’m crazy, but this guy just performed the sacred Goonies ritual and called out my exact situation!”
   Through the window, I could see Bob had transitioned from the Truffle Shuffle to what appeared to be interpretive dance, his belly still prominently displayed as he gestured dramatically at the night sky.
       “THE TRUFFLE SHUFFLE HAS UNLOCKED THE GATEWAY TO TRUTH!” Bob declared. “JUST AS IT ALLOWED CHUNK TO JOIN THE GREATEST TREASURE HUNT IN CINEMATIC HISTORY, IT NOW ALLOWS ME TO ACCESS THE COSMIC TREASURE OF KNOWING THAT ‘I’M GONNA BRING IT’!”
     “That’s it!” the customer exclaimed, putting his items down and pulling out his phone. “I need to document this moment. This is validation on a new level! He understands that sometimes you need a password, a ritual, a way to prove you’re worthy of delivering truth!”
   He began recording through the window as Bob continued his performance, now doing some kind of belly-based interpretive dance that was supposed to represent the flow of prophetic energy through the universe.
      “YOU SEE,” Bob continued, his voice taking on the tone of a revival preacher, “THE TRUFFLE SHUFFLE IS THE ULTIMATE GATEWAY RITUAL! CHUNK KNEW! HE UNDERSTOOD THAT SOMETIMES YOU MUST EXPOSE YOURSELF—LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY—TO GAIN ACCESS TO ADVENTURE! TO PROVE YOUR WORTHINESS TO SHARE TRUTH WITH THE WORLD!”
   The customer was frantically typing notes on his phone. “He’s right! I’ve been too afraid to really commit to my predictions! I need my own version of the Truffle Shuffle! My own gateway ritual! A way to prove I’m worthy of the ‘don’t say I didn’t tell ya’ lifestyle!” He paused his typing to yell into his phone: “And William, about your cryptocurrency investment last month that I said would flop like a fish on concrete? Check your portfolio, bro! Your Shiba Inu coins are down 73%! Don’t say I didn’t tell ya that dog coins were gonna be deader than roadkill!”
       “That’ll be $4.73,” I said, scanning his items while Bob began what appeared to be the finale of his Truffle Shuffle gateway ceremony.
     “Keep the change,” he said, handing me a twenty without looking away from Bob’s performance. “This is the most important moment of my career. I’m witnessing the birth of a new spiritual practice!”
   Bob’s voice reached a crescendo: “AND SO I PREDICT—having performed the sacred Truffle Shuffle gateway ritual—that this person will leave here tonight with renewed confidence in their ability to tell people things they didn’t ask to hear! THE TRUFFLE SHUFFLE HAS GRANTED THEM ACCESS TO THE COSMIC ADVENTURE OF VALIDATED PREDICTION! DON’T SAY I DIDN’T TELL YA THAT THE TRUFFLE SHUFFLE WOULD SET YOU FREE!”
   The customer stood there with tears in his eyes, clutching his Red Bull like a sacred artifact. “He really did it. He performed the gateway ritual and predicted that I’d find validation for my predictions. This is meta-prophecy at its finest, unlocked through the power of 80s movie wisdom!” He suddenly got animated again, shouting into his phone with the passion of a street preacher: “William! You know what your problem is? You’re always talking about what you’re gonna do instead of just doing it! I told you your business idea was gonna flop like a fish on concrete because you spent six months announcing your ‘revolutionary app’ on social media before you even learned how to code! DON’T TALK ABOUT IT, BE ABOUT IT! Do it without announcing it! Build it in secret! Launch it when it’s ready! THEN announce it after you do it and it worked! But NO, you had to post daily updates about your ‘coding journey’ and ‘entrepreneur mindset’ while never writing a single line of actual code! You had a launch party for an app that didn’t exist! You made business cards for a company with no product! You announced partnerships with people who’d never heard of you! All announcements, zero execution! Don’t say I didn’t tell ya that all talk and no action makes you a fish flopping on concrete for six months straight while everyone watches you embarrass yourself, bro!”
   As Bob finally climbed down from the sign—with considerably less grace than he’d climbed up—the customer headed for the door but stopped and turned back.
       “Miss, I want you to remember this night,” he said with the gravity of someone delivering a sacred message. “Six months from now, when I’m famous, and when this place becomes a pilgrimage site for truth-tellers everywhere, remember that it all started with the Truffle Shuffle… And when people ask how you knew this was going to happen…”
        “Don’t say you didn’t tell me?” I finished.
    “EXACTLY!” he beamed, then called out toward the parking lot: “Thank you, Truffle Shuffle Bob! Your belly-based gateway wisdom has changed my life! I will create my own entry ritual for prophecy!” He paused and shouted into his phone one final time: “And William! Remember when you said you were gonna ask out that girl from accounting and I said it was gonna flop because you were gonna text her instead of talking to her in person? Well she left you on read for three weeks! Fish! Concrete! Flopping! Don’t say I didn’t tell ya, my prophetically enlightened brother!”
   Bob waved from beside the sign, his shirt still pulled up, his wizard hat slightly askew. “THE TRUFFLE SHUFFLE GATEWAY PROVIDES ACCESS TO TRUTH FOR ALL WHO BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF UNSOLICITED PREDICTION!”
   As the customer drove away, probably to spread the gospel of Bob’s Truffle Shuffle gateway to his 87 followers, I stood there marveling at what had just transpired. Bob wandered back into the store, his ceremonial costume disheveled but his spirit clearly energized by his successful combination of 80s movie nostalgia and convenience store mysticism.
      “How’d I do, Karlee?” he asked, finally pulling his shirt back down. “Think the Truffle Shuffle really enhanced authority?”
     “It was certainly memorable,” I replied. “That guy seemed to think you changed his life.”
       “The Truffle Shuffle never fails,” Bob said sagely, adjusting Prediction Bear’s Magic 8 Bowling Ball. “Chunk understood that sometimes you have to prove your worthiness through ritual humiliation to gain access to something greater. I figured if I’m gonna be out there making predictions anyway, might as well use the same gateway energy that got Chunk into the greatest adventure of his life.”
   I pulled out my phone to text Evan: “Bob climbed on top of our sign and did the Truffle Shuffle as a ‘gateway ritual’ to unlock prophetic powers while making predictions through a megaphone. Customer with 87 followers thought it was cosmic validation for his ‘don’t say I didn’t tell ya’ lifestyle. Bob’s belly-based gateway prophecy apparently changed the guy’s life and inspired him to create his own prediction rituals. Just another Tuesday where 1985 movie passwords meet convenience store mysticism and someone drives away feeling spiritually awakened.”
   As I finished my cleaning routine, I found myself thinking about the strange magic of the Truffle Shuffle—how a humiliating password dance that Chunk had to perform to gain entry into Mikey’s house had somehow become Bob’s gateway ritual for delivering prophecies to customers who desperately needed to feel validated for their unsolicited predictions.
   Maybe that was the real magic of Chill n’Fill: it was a place where the most random pop culture references could become profound spiritual experiences, where a middle-aged man doing Chunk’s iconic gateway dance on top of a giant polar bear could genuinely change someone’s perspective on their place in the universe of prediction and validation.
   Just another night where The Goonies met modern prophecy, where gateway rituals unlocked cosmic truth, and I got paid minimum wage to witness Bob’s belly-based interpretation of earning access to wisdom.

Don’t say I didn’t tell ya it was gonna be that kind of night.