Meet Bob

I think I have to say my favorite moose is Bob. Bob is the first to arrive. Every Monday at 2:50 PM he briskly walks through the front door—well the only door and navigates himself to his seat on the far side of the bar. A bottle of Bud in a chilled glass is his poison, and he always pays with his debit card while the rest of the Moose Club is cash only.

“Did you fall out of any backseats this weekend?” Bob would always open with. “I don’t see any casts, and you don’t seem to be limping, so I’m going to say you were well behaved. Such a shame.”

While we wait for the rest of the crew to show up, I usually tell Bob any debauchery I may have caused over the weekend in exchange of dirt on the other guys, but for some reason yesterday, July 26^th, he had a story of his own after I told him I was a Capricorn.

“I dated a Capricorn once. Jane. I left her in London,” he began, “And I never saw her again, well first, I left her in Belize.”

Usually, I don’t pay much attention to the stories of yesteryear because they usually involve a tangent about toes curling, which tend to give me the heebie jeebies. Lucky for me there was no toe-curling involved.

“I ran into Jane in Denver a few years after I dropped her in Belize. She was engaged, but not for long. As soon as she saw me that night, and heard I was going to London in a few days she quickly broke off her engagement and wanted to go with me to London,” Bob said with a matter-of-fact tone.

The other moose began to trickle in, but Bob continued the saga of Jane.

“We went to dinner at a doctor friend of mine’s house. There was a cute nurse who caught my eye, and Jane told me, ‘you better watch out for that little fucking Colleen—she wants to sniff your drawers.’ Women have a sixth sense about each other you know? I should have listened to her.

When we went to London I was there strictly for the Wimbledon Tournament, but she went for me. The only problem was she didn’t want to see the match, so I left her in London and took the next flight to Ireland. Never saw Jane again.”

Bob later told me that he married Colleen, and should have listened to Jane. Out of his three ex-wives, Colleen was the only one he didn’t stay in contact with after the divorce. Turns out she wanted more than to just sniff his drawers.

The Fortune Teller

I am not one of those people that acquire a lot of good luck. Sure there are those days, when something amazing-out-of-the-blue happens, but generally speaking I am most likely to get my identity stolen before that ever happens--wait it already has been. But I take everything with a grain of salt, and I write about it.

Working happy hours four times a week gave me plenty of ammo to tell stories. There was the story of "The Cane Fight," "Earl," "The Moose Club," and most recently, "The Fortune Teller."
But what good is a story if I can't share it with others? Thus, my new story telling machine!
I'm The Bottle Opener. Actually, my name is Laura, but when I first tip-toed into a Monday happy hour shift, I opened more bottles then I could count.

One bartending shift a week, was all I needed to realize this is gonna be a long and bumpy ride. Slowly, but surely I inherited more happy hours and even a few night shifts here and there, but there are no greater stories than the ones portrayed between the hours of three and six Monday through Friday.

Like I said, the most recent awkward encounter was on the day that started it all: Monday. I was tending to all the old men that arrive every single Monday at three o' clock on the dot when someone new entered the bar.

He was someone who I had never seen in the neighborhood before. He leaned over the bar, with the light from outside still illuminating him from behind. He wore a small yellow turban, a scruffy salt and pepper face, and spoke in an Indian accent.

"You will be a very lucky girl," he started, "I can see it in your eyes."

Ha! I thought.

"You have been worried about love and business affairs, but you don't need to anymore because next month, April, will be a very lucky month for you." With a genuine smile, he turned around and proceeded to leave, but not before saying, "I wish you a happy life."

My first thought was What the hell just happened? But after always thinking extremely pessimistically for the better half of my life, I realized that he might be right.

Tomorrow is April 1st, and I only hope that it is the beginning of this supposed good luck. Cheers to the April Fool!