Spring Forward, Fall Way, Way Behind
We all started this year with boundless enthusiasm only to be stuck in an endless cycle of Yo-Yo dieting, manic home workouts, and a deluge of day drinking brunch options no matter if it’s the weekend or not.
So a lot of us are tired of it. The urge to have things go “back to normal” is understandable, although misguided. We’re never getting 100% back to normal. I think the blood orange skies in California and Oregon prove that point. Or the persistent mask wearing at bars and restaurants.
Plenty of you ask why wearing a mask for 10 feet from the door to the seat is worth wearing one at all.
Well, why are you all outside with that shitty attitude? You wanted things to be open. This is how things are going to open. No sense in complaining.
Or fighting.
Yes. Fighting.
The first time I’ve ever seen a fight happen when two people were sitting down before they scuffled.
Words exchanged, then some shouting, and then a shot of whiskey thrown (in a plastic cup) at another person. And that’s enough to go at someone’s neck. I will not lie. Something like this would have been mildly entertaining pre-COVID. But fighting isn’t socially distant. Either to join or break apart involves some manner of uncomfortable closeness. Plus, nobody starts or ends a fight smelling like they Febreezed a rosebush after hanging laundry with an apple pie cooling on a windowsill. They’re almost always sweaty dudes who drank too much.
I see the fight start and rush up. We already have a sizable crowd outside because of several factors, chief among them being our new roaming alcoholic drinkers (RADs) and people who don’t understand this simple concept that governors across the country made legal. More on why this angers me in a bit, but duty calls.
The fight isn’t in full swing yet. After assessing the situation, there are two main aggressors. Each with a hand on the other’s throat. The downside to people engaged in this style of brawling is the inability to gain leverage necessary to draw one away from the other.
This connection they share can go two ways. The first, one or more members break the two apart and then take one out the door.
This is by far the more logical approach. And not what happened at all because both of them were post-COVID muscle hamsters — short guys who probably used to be fit but kept sipping the protein shakes without working out all the time because gyms were closed. Short in stature, not lightweight, and embraced in a way that made outside leverage nearly impossible.
With all of that information to process, I swung them out as if we were waltzing in a grand ballroom.
I bear-hugged both hamsters, let out a YAWP and spun them round in a 360-degree twirl not once, but twice to reach the exit ramp. At that point, they separated and we got them both outside. Well, mostly. My manager got accidentally manhandled by a new employee and one fighter grabbed a hold of his leg. He tumbled into a busser bin but was otherwise unharmed.
Not to sound tough or anything, but I’m doing this while masked.
It’s not that hard. It didn’t take me any more time to catch my breath than on a normal fight night.
Once I did, I needed to let things settle. Nobody inside for a few minutes. Let the bar and kitchen catch up with orders. Let us clean a few tables. Let everyone cool off.
Well, except for Fighter No. 2, the MAGAphone, who could not shut up about how he was so much tougher than anyone else. Last month, we already had a guy spouting off racist tropes, but this little dude cranked it up to 11. Clad in some knockoff Trump rally gear and an American flag neckerchief, he really wanted to prove he was all that AND a bag of chips.
“Try it, bitch! Come out here and throw down,” MAGAphone said.
“Sir, go home.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Says so much about you. Not fighting makes you a pussy.”
“Sir, the time to talk trash was inside when I was throwing both of you out at the same time.”
He grumbled at that before making the ultimate mistake of the night. The next group up was telling him to chill out, take the loss, stop talking trash.
MAGAphone turned to this group of five, predominantly black, led by a man with my build — a couple inches shorter — flipped them the bird, and then called them… you guessed it… the n-word (plural).
Now, nobody had a stopwatch handy, but I would bet the adrenaline kick on the scared shitless run to the parking lot got the fighter to a sub-4.5 40 time. Oh, you’re just going to call the entire group the n-word and think they’re just going to be like, “all good, sticks and stones and whatnot.”
Just a quick finishing aside on the RADs. Hurray for them. Knowing the rules. Understanding where you can go (almost anywhere) with your to-go cup and drink. Being a great customer who follows directions and rules.
Then there’s the rest of you.
Who wait for a spot in the bar/restaurant for a seat that may take HOURS.
You even have the mind-numbingly option to get to-go drinks to take back to your group waiting in line. And yet you still don’t do it.
Some took full advantage of the new rules as they pertain to line drinking, but there’s a steep learning curve that is frustrating to see in real time. It’s like if Willy Wonka walked up to you while you were in line at the candy store and just handed you the keys to the chocolate factory, but you were like, “nah, I’m good.”
“I don’t understand,” Wonka would continue. “You’re still buying my Wonka bars?”
“Yeah, we love buying Wonka bars,” they would say.
“See here, my good man. These are the keys to my entire factory. All the Wonka bars you could ever want.”
“Do they have the golden ticket?”
“Why… would you need the golden ticket? There is no contest. You are the winner. I am the man in the funny hat and uncomfortable suit and ridiculous cane and orange men who haven’t yet ruined the country. Here are the keys to the whole of my fortune. Take them and be on your merriest of ways.”
“We’ll wait.”
“What if I just give you some Wonka bars while you wait in this line, on your way to buy more Wonka bars? Can I assume you understand that I am still giving you the same benefit you will receive in the future but at a more convenient time, yet still giving you free will in relation to purchasing my candy bars?”
“No, we’re good. We’ll wait.”
It’s a good thing Willy Wonka and I are two completely different people, regardless of fictionality. Because Willy Wonka totally killed those kids.
