“Hey Brian.”
Tuesday nights are usually a cause for celebration for me, because all the hard work for the week is done by Tuesday night. This week, as a special treat, I got together with my friend Scott, and we went to a local restaurant/brewery to hang out, have a few beers, and just generally have a good time.
This was most definitely one of the most interesting and entertaining dining experiences of my life.
Right off the bat, things got off to a rough start. I ordered the “mountain of nachos,” and Scott ordered a pasta dish. When they brought our meals out, Scott’s was completely wrong, so he had to send it back. This is always a bummer, because now one person has their meal, and the other person is stuck waiting. Not only that, but now you also have to wonder what “special presents” the cooks might be leaving in your food for you. A feeling of resignation settles over the experience.
So, fifteen minutes later they bring out Scott’s meal, and again they get it wrong! Unbelievable! At this point, we’re both just sharing the nachos, because there’s no way I’ll be able to finish them anyway. Scott was really in a dilemma now, because he’s never sent a meal back twice! Fortunately, I was able to encourage him to send it back, because I knew he was hungry and he really wanted to have this meal. I think his first beer helped him be bold enough to do it, too.
The third time was finally right, and it was a good thing - Scott was really hungry! So we had a lot of fun eating and talking about various things.
One thing Scott mentioned is that he had read some studies that showed that your GPA is actually not an indicator of your future success! These studies showed that there was no real correlation. Rather, the college you attend and the level of degree you complete, those are strong indicators of how successful you will become.
Of course, if this is true, this has all kinds of implications, not the least of which being that the college admissions department is really important; they are the ones that “pick the winners,” if the college you attend is the strongest signal about whether you will be successful.
This also implies, and this was the disturbing part to me, that the grades that teachers like me assign, they really don’t mean so much. They are a contrived metric, and have little real bearing on a person’s real level of success in the future. You give somebody an A, and they could end up being a miserable failure in the real world. Or, somebody gets a C, and they are a wild success.
Anyway, I’m not sure I want to keep thinking about that one. I would have to see these studies myself, anyway. But that was kind of a dark subject for me.
We talked about a lot of other things too. A rip-snorting time.
Then it got a little weird. Around closing time, all of a sudden this guy plops down next to me, just completely drunk. And he begins to engage us in conversation, although he never really got around to finding out our names. He just made ‘em up for us. That was probably for the best, because he was completely sloshed off his rocker, and couldn’t really keep track of our real names anyway. I was “Brian.”
Anyway, I guess Brokeback Mountain had been on his mind, because this guy was completely convinced that we were both gay. And his girlfriend finally encouraged him to come over and say hello to us, and see what we were like.
Now, usually you don’t walk up to complete strangers and say something like that, because that’s the kind of thing that can easily result in getting beaten to within an inch of your life. But, fortunately for this guy, Scott and I were just very amused by the situation. The guy’s girlfriend finally came over to join us, nearly as drunk as he was. We had a very random conversation that, although it covered a wide range of topics, most of the thoughts expressed were more notable for their high concentration of obscenities than for their depth of insightfulness. I mainly said nothing; that seemed like the best option at the time!
So, finally we were released from this temporary incarceration, and we called it a night. It was definitely one of those situations where on the way home I was mainly thinking, “What just happened??” Here I was minding my own business, having a great meal, and then all of a sudden the whole world went screwy.
I’m thinking of avoiding restaurant/breweries in the future - it seems like that might be a good idea. At least around closing time. Or maybe I’ll just go, and then when it’s closing time, I’ll just sit in the parking lot and call the cops every time one of the lushes leave. Now that would be entertaining.