The Mission

I'm standing at the entrance of a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, holding a giant Teddy Bear and greeting people with what I call my Female-Tom-Cruise-Plastic-Smile. My lower spine pulsates with pain, and  the arch of my left foot is pinching again with the pressure of the orthopedic shoe implant prescribed by my podiatrist. I sigh as the Oak Ridge Boys sing "Elvira" for the upteenth time over the loudspeaker, while bow-legged men clad in cowboy hats push past me in pursuit of biscuits and sausage gravy.


I didn't go to school for this.


In fact, for 20 years, I've been a journalist, unearthing stories about corrupt politicians, drug kingpins and even a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.


So you can safely say that when I'm working the floor of a Cracker Barrel, outfitted in a starched white shirt and firmly pressed brown apron, I conjure an image of Chuck Bartowski (computer-geek-turned-government-agent) at his clandestine job with the Buy More.


How did I end up here, you may ask? Am I on a secret story assignment for a top-flight news organization?


Um, not exactly, although I am a full-time freelance journalist. During the rest of the week, I write for a variety of magazines to keep a roof over my head.


But I'm here in the Cracker Barrel for one reason and one reason only -- my mission. And it seems to be an improbable, incomprehensible, incontrovertibly obnoxiously impossible mission:


To obtain health insurance.


But wait, I'm digressing. I guess we should press Rewind and go back to the beginning ... what started all of this? Why would I take a part-time job at a Cracker Barrel for health insurance, anyway?


Tune in tomorrow to find out why I had to accept my Mission Impossible: Health Insurance.