Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Moons Over My Hammy, Fisticuffs and Banishment



Back in my college days, as you might imagine, there was no shortage of time spent at all night diners in the ridiculous hours of the morning, drinking coffee and eating food of questionable quality (oh sweet youth, how I miss thee). Our rotating stable of chow holes was composed of IHOP (always a stalwart), Red Lion (their cheap ass pyramid breakfast was a life saver), Hoots (a local favorite. Their mozzarella sticks were the greatest hangover preventative ever created) and America’s other stalwart, Denny’s. All the nights in those days were the same, but it was a warm early morning, the hallmark of Oregon’s all to brief respite from the rain and cold which dominated most of our days when myself, my friend A, and his brother B found ourselves at Denny’s ready for cheap food and crappy coffee.

For background, it’s important that you now A and B had a bit of an interesting relationship. They very much loved each other, but B tended to be a bit, well, “erratic”, and neither were afraid to quarrel…At best. We were sedately giving the menu a once over as we sipped on coffee which was surely strained through a sock as they had long ago ran out of coffee filters making crass jokes about math and prostitutes when the waitress approached us.

“Hey, y’all. You know what you want?”
B looked up at the waitress and blithely asked, “Are the moons your butt cheeks over my hammy?”

This query was quickly followed by A throwing his water into B’s face. B, in an attempt to be diplomatic, threw his full glass of water and A’s head. “What the hell?” went to “Holy shit!” when A leapt across the table and punched B square in the jaw. Next thing I knew there was a two man gang fight going on. In retrospect it was far more contained and brief than it felt like at the time, but for me, sitting in booth calmly drink my coffee I was expecting the cops to fly through the door at any moment. I had already put on my, “I don’t know these guys officer!” face when they stopped. It was as if they both fell the other had had enough at the same time, and everything was okay again.

“Y’all need to get out of here before I call the cops.”, She had the calm demeanor of a long time waitress who had seen worse what had just transpired and was only telling she was going to call the cops because it would give her an excuse to murder us if we sassed her back.

I slid out of the booth, shrugged my shoulders as if to say, “Kids these day, eh?”, dropped a twenty on the table and headed into the dark. Still hungry.