The Bar Scene

Drink glasses hanging over a bar

I went this week-end with a group who chose to eat at "Cheeseburger in Paradise" and then they chose to go sit in a sports bar. It was crowded. Too crowded for me. I drank Pepsi because I was driving. It was snowing something awful. I have to drive 30 miles compared to my friends who drive from 1 to 3 miles to get home.

One sister joins me from time to time. The group of girls I meet with take extras (friends of friends) into the fold and we have a good time. At the core there are six of us. I was the latest to join the group in 1990. The other 5 had been getting together since the early 80's.

None of us have married. I am the only one to have had a child. Each one of us are (or were) very close to our Mom. Every one of us are very close to our nieces and nephews or a sort of surrogate parent to a child of a friend if there are no nieces/nephews. Three of us have steady boyfriends. Three of us have at least one cat. I am the oddball with a child and many pets. They seem to be more citified whereas I am country.

The sister that joined me was very eager to get away from her husband. He is a couch potato and watches nothing but sports on TV kind of guy and they live way out in the boondocks. She hates sports and she just recently connected to the Internet through a wireless company. No cell phone. No cable. Their TV is satellite.

She likes the bar scene. She had a good time. As did the birthday girl. Me? I can't stand the leers from the drunks. Or the ones who bump into you as they sit down or walk past.

I'd rather stay home. I didn't drive to the restaurant as I had left my car at my friend's house. So I went to the bar with them. My sister was having a good time and I didn't want to cut it short.

But that snow. No plows had touched the roads. It took me over an hour to drive the 30 miles back home.

When my sister drinks she keeps talking about "the accident." She was driving in the accident where my Mom died. A dump truck ran a stop sign. She relives this nightmare and I felt so bad for her. Fortunately the next morning she remembered very little.

The food at CiP was good. I was able to talk to friends until the alcohol changed their conversation to the whiny, crying game. Poor poor pitiful me. The one girl had been on a blind date and he had not called her back. She was ogling the bartender. Another one went on and on about her cousin from Florida. The drunk on my right kept bumping his chair into mine.

It is like somebody has taken an evening from my early 20's and reran the video tape. I don't mind getting together at a friend's house or around a camp fire, but I just can't stomach the bar scene anymore.