Rainy Monday

It's a rainy Monday when I drop by the bar for happy hour. For a while I'm the only bar customer, so when Bridgette arrives at 4:15 and clocks-in, she orders food then sits beside me and tells me all about her own recent social blunder. "I'm so stupid," she says, "I ought to win the Darwin award."

Ah, relationships. They do so much for our self-esteem.

A woman comes in and sits down two seats from me. For a while Bridgette and I continue to talk, but soon the new customer and I start talking. We talk for the next two and a half hours. She's an ex-bartender from Florida, and she tells me about the time she had a customer—a professional gambler—who gave her a four thousand dollar tip. I guess with gamblers it's "easy come, easy go".

(Next day, I tell a female acquaintance about meeting this lady and the tale of the four thousand dollar tip, just because it was an interesting story, and her response is, "Did you make a love connection?" I guess that would have been the more interesting story.)

Terry is going off the clock, and she takes the trouble to come by my barstool and tell me she's leaving. "Bye Terry," I tell her. "I'll see you next Monday."

"Next Monday?" she asks with just a little disbelief. "I don't believe that." (I'm spending entirely too much time in this place.)

Eventually my new acquaintance leaves, and I leave, too. For the entire time I've been at the bar, we were the only bar customers. And it was very pleasant.

"I will be seeing you again!" my new acquaintance says.

Maybe. But when you meet people at a bar, it's usually more like ships passing in the night. So I have no expectations.

Wednesday. Terry turns out to be right. I stop by Wednesday afternoon (her day off) and there she is. She's having dinner with her kids, Ryan and Shannon (three and six). Again, she stops by my barstool, this time with the kids in tow. Ryan is holding a Teddy bear like it's a life jacket on a stormy sea. Here's some advice for you, Ryan: when all else fails, hug your Teddy.

Cathy is working tonight, and she actually speaks to me. (If you knew Cathy you would know how unusual that is. In fact, I'm so astonished that I'm sure she must be speaking to someone else, until she says, "I said 'Hello' to you.")

"Hi Cathy," I finally muster. "You startled me when you spoke to me. It's so unlike you."

She pretends to slap my arm. "I bet that didn't startle you," she says.

She's right. It never surprises me to encounter meanness. Niceness from people—that's what always surprises me.