Like they say: “Food before beer–never fear!
Beer before food, though? You’re screwed, dude…”
“Hey, don’t lie to me–I really like all you melon farmers so don’t ruin it by lying to me about who’s married to who around here!”
Uggh…as soon as I said it, I almost immediately regretted it. I mean, who goes around calling people–people they’ve barely known for 24 hours, nonetheless– ‘melon farmers’? And of course you know that by ‘melon farmers‘ I mean that I was dropping the mother of all nuclear bombs on them, the F-Bomb to ruin them all: mother f***ers.
But, hey, it’s not like I’d ever see these people again…right?
Earlier that morning, I had just nailed my presentation during what was perhaps the most important business trip of my life, and now it was time to chillax like…well, like a melon farmer, with my hosts. A gang of youthful co-workers about my age were getting together at a local bar that evening, and they had kindly invited me to tag along. Heck yes, I’m accepting that invitation!
Seeing as how I didn’t have my own transportation, one of the older, more mature guys in the bunch–whom we’ll call “Jackie” for reasons that wouldn’t be racist even in the slightest–volunteered to pick me up from my hotel around 7. Sure enough, right on time, the ever-responsible and reliable Jackie rolled up to take me off to an evening of adult drinks and light socializing. As far as I was concerned, everything was going perfectly as planned.
“A varied sampling of high-gravity beverages?!? Can this night get any better?!?”
If you know me at all, then you will no doubt understand the utter delight I experienced when we showed up at the bar and discovered that not only was Jackie covering my drinks that evening, but the featured potent potables of the evening would be beers featuring higher-than-average alcohol content.
“And free pizza?!?”
I wouldn’t even have to buy dinner. At that point my head was essentially exploding on account of the streak of good fortune I was experiencing.
“Slap that wrist band on me, and let’s get this party started…”
“EXCUSE ME! OVER HERE! Dang it, it’s like she can’t even see us, even when she’s looking right at us!”
If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought some Sixth Sense shenanigans was going on, and that I was pretty much a ghost to the person doling out the pizza. Or was it, yunno…more intentional…more nefarious? Like this:
It was funny, though, you know? For some reason I didn’t have any problem at all getting my tiny servings of boozy goodness–one could say that it was literally flowing my way–but when it came to getting any sustenance to moderate and mitigate my intoxicating intake? My pizza-obtaining efforts were almost down-right comical.
Admittedly, in the beginning it was sort of my fault, focusing more on the ‘drink’ aspect than the whole ‘food’ part. But 45 minutes and 4 micro-doses of beer in, I started getting pretty dang hungry.
But any time I tried to get my hands on a slice of the ‘za only ended in heartache and disappointment. The first couple of attempts, wouldn’t you know it, the pizza person–despite heading right towards us–was intercepted by another group of hungry patrons and gave them the last few slices instead.
For convenience, we can just call those “Milton Moments:”1A reference to the 1999 Mike Judge cult-comedy, Office Space.
Then there was the time when I tried to intercept somebody else’s pizza. But as you can imagine as it might go in a dark, crowded bar, that quickly devolved into a Kramer-esque fiasco:
Taking the matter into my own hands, and actually talking to someone about getting some pizza to us didn’t help either:
“Oh, so sorry about that, um…yeah, it seems that we’re out of pizza right now, and we’ll have to wait another 25 minutes for the kitchen to get a fresh batch out,” was the very unhelpful reply I got.
“You got to be ----- kidding me…oh well, might as well sample some more brew in the meantime…”
Three “samples” later, I finally spotted the fresh pizza coming out–and right towards me! Here’s a traumatic–er, I mean “dramatic”–reenactment of what should have been a glorious and triumphant moment:
You could say that I got “Elained” real good, i.e. the pizza person swerved slightly at the last second and walked within inches of me…but didn’t even bother to stop when I very obviously reached out my expectant fingers to grab a slice.
*Sigh*
Eventually, after serving pretty much every other ----- person in the pub, ye ol’ pizza prick finally circled back around to where I was, and–miracle of all miracles!–two slices remained! And they were all mine!
Yup, all of 1/32 of a pizza, to offset at least 32/1 oz of 10% ABV (or higher) liquid that was sloshing around my system by that point. Even after all the comedy-drama I had to endure just to get to this point, the Universe thought it would be hilarious that when I finally got my much sought-after prize, that it would be a great punchline if the slices were tiny af, similar to the one seen here:
Though small, here’s yet another reenactment of how it felt to eat them, on account of my inebriation, and all…
“Who wants some Chinese food?!?”
I didn’t know who suggested it, nor did I care; I was unintentionally drunk af and even hungrier. Plus, I needed to get some food in me, because I had big plans to go snorkeling in the morning, and I sure as heck didn’t want to do that hungover.
“This melon farmer does!” I pointed at myself with two thumbs, completely forgetting the rest of the joke about “Who’s got two thumbs and…” and what-not (And of course, I might note here, it’s not so bad to call yourself a melon farmer. Just gonna throw that out there.)
We gathered up the gang and all staggered off together in a gaggle towards some acclaimed Chinese restaurant a few blocks away.
And dang, they all must have experienced the same cruddy pizza-luck that I had, because we were ordering up a glorious spread like there was no tomorrow, hearkening to mind yet another Seinfeldian moment:
It was somewhere in the midst of feasting on all that food, that I, feeling real good and perhaps about to comfortable with these people I hardly knew, that–as you know already–I expressed my burgeoning affection for them by calling them all melon farmers.
Great job, me!
Alas, though, that wasn’t the moment that I rue the most from that evening. No, the nadir of my night showed up with the check–you, know, that piece of paper that lists all the things your party ordered, and how much you owe for said items. Yeah, that thing.
Well, there were two things about which I lacked foresight: 1) even though I was their guest, I shouldn’t have assumed that they were going to cover all my expenses; & 2) despite being on a business trip, it didn’t occur to me to have any cash on me.
So, there we were, everyone pulling cash out of their wallets and such, throwing it into the communal pot in the middle of table. Except for me, sitting there like a besotted asshat, with that panicked look in my eyes that said “Wait…I’m going to have to pay for my own food?” Followed by:
…except you need to replace “Hope you don’t mind I pay you in change,” with a good 20 seconds of awkward silence. Fortunately, Jackie–ever reliable Jackie–finally offered to cover my share, because why not? He had already paid for my beer and pizza and was my personal chauffeur for the evening. Sure! Just throw another $25 worth of Chinese food my tab!
Ugh. I couldn’t wait to finally get back to my hotel room, where I could die of embarrassment and regret peacefully in my sleep…
The points of the story are, first: if you ain’t yet ate the pizza-pie, don’t slam that whiskey & rye.
Second: if you’re the type of wino that uses ‘melon farmer’ as a term of endearment, maybe not bust it out the first time you go a-drinking with someone.
Third: always carry at least $40 in cash on you at all times (bonus tip: always offer to pay for at least yourself, dummy).
Follow these 3 handy tips, and perhaps you can avoid suffering the same fate as yours truly. You see, unlike Twinkies, the farcical free pizza fiasco wasn’t enough to disqualify me from landing my dream job as an MRI researcher in Hawai’i2#HumbleBrag…meaning that for 5 days a week for the next two years, this Freeloader In Paradise had to show his face to those melon farmers…
Content created on: 4/5 March 2022 (Fri/Sat)
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