Tuesday, October 21, 2008

"Dave"

I have never thought of Applebee's as a joint to hang out in, but apparently Dave has. I was sitting at a table in the bar area with The Boyfriend. There were a few different people at the bar, all watching the football and baseball games that were on TV. Dave comes in, sits down at the bar and announces two things: #1 his kids are in the car and #2 he just bought a house here. His fellow barsitters and tenders are friendly and reassure him when he expresses doubt about such a big purchase. He then goes on to explain that he owns a martial arts business in The Cities, but it's okay since that's only a 30-minute drive from here. (I think it's more like 55, The Boyfriend says 45.) He then launches into a story about a customer injury, a lack of insurance, his brother's failure to buy the insurance and how he just decided to pay the customer off. All the while, he has pointed out what everyone else did wrong. He did nothing wrong, of course, and has the money to just take care of things. No one actually asked him anything about what he did or how the business was after he mentioned it. He got there all on his own. At this point, it's obvious to me that no one is paying much attention to him. The couple that was sitting closest to him went outside for a smoke. He then starts talking about several other things and finally settles on sports. Dave decides that insulting the Vikings is a good idea. He asks if they have ever made it to the Superbowl, and when someone points out that they have, he says, "Well not this year." Wow, he really knows how to make friends. He ends up bringing up a bunch of other teams and cities trying to stop the heckling that is coming at him from several of the formerly friendly bar patrons. When he finally gets up to leave, one of them tells him to take care of his kids, and he says, "You take care of yours, too," as if that was meant as a friendly good-bye. Some people just don't get it.

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