April fools!

Well, I (Brooke) *accidentally* played a nasty April Fool's trick on Nick yesterday... 

Yesterday I wasn't feeling well, but it happened to be the day for moving out of the borrowed condo. Since Nick was at work, it fell to me to move everything and clean the condo on my own, and by the time the day was over I was exhausted and feeling pretty bad. 

So when Nick got home after an easy day of, you know, actually working, he offered to run to the store for some painkiller, and to pick up some dinner on the way back. I accepted the offer and off he went.

After almost two hours, Nick wasn't back - I was getting worried! Guam is tiny - you can drive around the entire island in two hours! - and the store was just down the street. What was keeping him? A random machete attack? Or had Guam just tipped over and dropped Nick into the sea?

Ten minutes more and I was about to panic, when the door opened and Nick stumbled in, clutching a takeout bag and looking like a beaten man.

"We we warned!" he gasped, sinking into a chair. "Never go shopping on the first of the month! The store was an absolute madhouse - it was surreal."

"Why? Is the first of the month the traditional shopping day for Chamorro people?"

"Maybe it's a new tradition," Nick smiled a little. "It's the day that the food stamp cards are recharged." 

He described the scene - hundreds of families, families with many children, children all running out of control, the entire store in complete pandemonium and the checkout lines so long that you couldn't see the beginning from the end. As soon as he could orient himself within all of the chaos, he grabbed a couple of bottles of coke - because a six-pack would have cost $7 - and looked for painkillers. 

It turned out that painkillers were only available behind the counter of a particular checkout station, so Nick traced that line to the very end and prepared for a long wait. 

The man in front of was only holding a couple of items. He nodded at Nick. "Five items or less," he said.

"What?" 

"This line is five items or less. You'd never know it." Nick and the man looked forward and backward at the other people in the line: children running, yelling, crying; carts and baskets filled and overflowing, piled high with goods to be bought with a month's worth of food stamp points. 

The man shrugged. "O.G.," he told Nick, with a philosophical smile. "Only in Guam!"