In the summer of 1994, I got my first job at Dairy Queen. It was one of those places with no dining room that served only “cool treats” through a walk up window. People in Topeka know this place well; it’s still there on 17th street.

I worked with a guy named Brian. Brian was a couple of years older than me and I thought that he was pretty darned cool. We had a lot of fun that summer. Sometimes, we’d attack each other with plastic bags filled with soft serve. Other times, we’d suck toppings into a straw and spray each other with it. When we got bored with that, we’d roll up cookie dough and cover it in dipping chocolate so it looked like poop. Brian taught me how to roll up a wet rag so that it looked like a guy’s privates. We always thought it was pretty funny to leave a few of those lying around.

When Nine Inch Nails came on the radio, we sang along. We sang loudly. We sang especially loud if there were customers around. You know which song. You know how it goes.

Sometimes, a carload of girls from Topeka High School would stop by. And yes, my heart would fill with longing. But there was nothing I could do, because I was covered with goo.

We kept a tin pan of pecans next to the cash register by the window. We used the pecans for all kinds of things—sundaes, banana splits, Blizzards, anything the customer wanted, really.

One day, a customer was ordering something. At the end of her order, she added, “And I’d like nuts on that, not peanuts, but…”

“What,” Brian asked, pointing at the tin of pecans, “these nuts?”

I thought that this was hilarious.

For the rest of the summer, we’d just point at that tin of pecans every time we had a real dill of a customer.

I wonder what happened to Brian.

As for myself, I work at Wendy’s now. I keep on telling the drive thru girl to ask the customers, “Do you want nuts on that?”

But she doesn’t want to listen to me.

And that’s the story of these nuts.