Nothing gets you more into the Christmas spirit like dealing with a Scrooge or two.

Although, I don’t think Ol’ Ebenezer threatened to murder Bob Cratchit.

Deck the Halls

A big snowstorm can bring out the best of us, if you’re still of elementary school age and you get to sled on a big hill. When a snowstorm hits a group of drinking-age men who think their car fenders are carnival bumpers, well then things get more complicated.

What you think happened happened. One car full of people slammed into another in the parking lot. The colliding vehicle ran through like it was dry pavement in summer. The collided vehicle was full of a few guys warming up about to leave.

It became 3-on-3 hockey if the goal isn’t to score a goal but to pummel each other into the ground first.

Now, I was across the street and viewing with a few people who were outside smoking. It wasn’t unbearably cold in the mid 20s, but it was snowing heavily. One fighting duo was struggling to find footing, slipping on the snow and ice causing punches to land wildly. One guy got his opponent in a ground and pound by the front left wheel well, and the final pair was trading blows by the hood.

A woman standing next to me screamed, “Don’t fight! Stop it! You’re hurting each other!”

Yeah, duh. Fighting is stupid … when you’re doing it. It’s hilarious when others do it. Especially when they don’t have a lot of practice.

Another woman thought this was her moment to shine, so she raced over to break up the fighting. No, her car wasn’t over there, her group arrived in an Uber.

No, she didn’t know any of the people fighting, none of them had been inside yet.

And no, she wasn’t in fighting shape. She still had the blunt in her hand as she ran across the street.

As more people came rushing to the door to see the fight in progress, the woman’s friend came bursting out, screaming at the top of her lungs.

“DON’T DO IT.
COME BACK.
THAT’S SOME WHITE BITCH SHIT!”

The woman very much kept on doing her white bitch shit.

Her friend and the rest of the group corralled the woman by the fight and got everyone home. By the time the fighting had stopped, all parties had left and Marinara, who yearns to see a good fight happen. finally came back from the other end of the bar.

Missed the whole thing.

Sing for All to Hear

A gaggle of graduation revelers toasting their best friend came outside to all catch a smoke break. All of them. All 8 of them.

Eight women, all drinking, all smoking, and singing Mr. Brightside as loud as they could.

Well, at least until the next song came on the TouchTunes machine.

It was the original Law & Order theme song.

Didn’t even know that was an option.

One woman hears the tune and says to nobody (and also everybody), “I fucking love Dick Wolf.”

The graduating friend takes the Wolf stan’s cigarette so she could run back inside to hear the theme music. She was amazed at what she was hearing, and I was amazed that she was having this reaction for not being the one who played it.

She asked what radio station we had, I said it was a jukebox.

“Oh, like a TouchTunes?”
“Yes. it’s a TouchTunes.”

Elated, the woman runs back to her group and exclaims, “you guys, they have a TouchTunes JUICE box.”

None of them went back inside.

All I Want for Christmas Is You
To Leave

Two guys and a girl walk up, it’s late but not past last call. The snow has mostly stopped. The fight was so long ago nobody from outside is still in the bar. All the loud girls are gone, replaced with a quiet mix of people looking at their drinks more than consuming them.

Two guys and a girl walk up, an older man coming out from the bar to meet them at the door.

The lead guy is celebrating his 21st birthday. The girl behind him was very much not. I held onto her card while I checked the second guy. Unfortunately for me I would be just 1 for 1.

I did not think they would put up such a stink over it. It was printed on the wrong material thickness, had the wrong color hue, and the signature was font. As in, in lieu of a real signature scanned over, they just used a script font from MS Word.

Of all the things you could do, that’s as low tier of a try as you can attempt.

Birthday Boy raised his voice first. He went through the whole gamut from, “she’s 21” to “she’s way older than 21.”

Oh my. Of course, sir. I apologize for my mistake. I didn’t realize she was “way over 21.”

Then came the claim from this Real Genius.

“I was in this bar three days ago and you scanned my fake and it was fine.”

A few things to break down here:

1. Apparently, we scanned his ID, which we definitely don’t do.

2. He got past our scanners and came in with his fake on a Tuesday, despite not being from the area and only visiting the bar because he’s on break from school.

3. We let him in with the fake, which is why we should let his girlfriend (in the literal sense, I don’t think they were a couple) come in with her’s.

4. But it’s not fake.

I think the cold was getting to me, because usually have something quick and sharp in response but for the life of me all I came up with was , “nobody scanned your ID.”

He kept making his case to no avail, and I kept telling him he should just call the cops.

“What, you’ve never been wrong before?”

Yes, I have been wrong before. I told him my failure rate was 3 out of 1,009. And none in the last 500.

A man waiting for an Uber with his girlfriend did some math way quicker than I ever could.

“Damn. That’s like .29%. Nice job!”

The older man made a performative gesture by whipping out his phone to call the sheriff. Cool, I said, then the girl would just get a ticket.

At which point the girl said, “nobody’s calling the cops. We’re leaving.”

We’ll touch on this in a second. Because the man was clearly dialing a three-digit number and stopped when he realized something.

As the group was leaving, the Real Genius kept flipping me off, nothing new. But he said one extra phrase that could’ve led him into more trouble had I just remembered his dumbass name.

“That’s fine, I’ll go home and grab my 9. We’ll see who gets the ID then.”

The math wiz gave me another glance.

“Yo, did he just threaten to shoot you over a fake ID.”
”Yeah, it happens sometimes.”

He shouted one more time, so I shouted back, “Merry Christmas!”

And my new outdoor friend shouted, “and fuck off!”

The quad drove off, but snow obscured the license plate.

After closing, I found out why they stopped trying to call the police. The girl was on a student Visa from Vietnam. To dive a little deeper on this, a foreign … anyone shouldn’t have a US fake ID. Granted, I clearly I don’t think anyone should have a fake, but unlike the misdemeanor some random kid from Battle Creek would get, this girl would get deported. That’s a hell of a good reason to stop dialing that phone dude.

I’m also sure accessory to attempted murder would look bad to the State Department, but that’s my last hot take of 2022.