Last night Cliff arranged a get together for my friends at a local restaurant and arcade type place for my birthday. Dinner was fun, and I got a turtle ice cream cake. Not too shabby. Once we had kids (and certainly since we had two!) time spent with friends out of the house is in short supply, and I had a really great time catching up and eating hot food, without having to get up to refill a sippy cup or grab another fork or share my plate with anyone. Even though Cliff did steal my last bite of cheese stick.
My game of choice at the ol’ arcade is trivia. I know, I know. Hello, bookworm/dork/geek/nerd/total tool. Nevertheless, I suck at everything else, and I enjoy trading my tickets for value-inflated crappy trinkets I would never, ever buy outside of that situation. As a cursory nod to maturity, I now trade them for crap I can give to my kids. Mostly because I can no longer get away with fake tattoos and glitter hair gel.
There were six slots at the trivia game. Five were full – three with some sort of family group, and a couple that was about as drunk as could possibly be seemly at 6pm on a Sunday evening. The guy was your average frat boy, plus 10 years. But still sporting the backwards baseball cap. In other words, kind of a douchebag, you could tell just by looking at him. But you knew he had played his drunken charm for all it was worth – he had that weird sense of entitlement about him. He had clearly been dominating the game up to that point, and when I took a seat, he called out to me “Are you ready to play?”
Well, yeah. I sat down didn’t I? I said “yeah, sure I am”. I thought he was just being polite and making sure I was in the game before the time limit to join in had passed. Apparently not. He leaned further forward and asked again, louder “Yeah, but are you ready to PLAY?” Oh sure, DrunkMan. It’s on.
I totally kicked his ass. It was awesome, and I am a geek enough to admit I enjoyed each and every time I got an answer right and heard his groan of defeat. After one game, he leaned over to his ladyfriend and drunk-whispered that he wanted to leave and do something else, that he didn’t like losing. After two games, he stood up, ripped off her string of tickets*, and told me “I don’t like playing with you. You are smarter than me. Do you know how that makes me feel?” and took off. I suppose I was supposed to…………….what? Coddle his ego and lose so that he could impress his way into LadyFriends drawers? Sorry, dude. My payoff for being a total wallflower dweeb from the ages of 13 until, well…..STILL NOW while you no doubt played big man on campus and had, you know, DATES comes now. Boo-yah!
So there’s your lesson, kids. Read a bunch of books, skip those keggers, and one day in your mid thirties you, too, can kick some drunk guys ass at video trivia. Do you really need a better reason to do well in school?
*My advice to the scantily clad LadyFriend? Bail, honey. And bail fast. No dude who would reach across you and rip off your tickets and walk away with them can be any good for you. :P
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