If I've Learned Anything; or Bartender? One for My Friend Here

“I feel like I’m having a hard day.”

“You feel like you’re having a hard day? Or you are having a hard day?”

“I are having a hard day.”

“Well just how hard a day has it been? I mean, has there been math involved? Has the word “platypus” entered into it at all?”

T, the man who tired of lawn work and took up cooking, the man who lost his pants to a raiding pair of socks in Florida, the man who delights in messing with my head, is on the phone trying to determine why I feel my day is hard.

To his credit, he has kept his comments out of the gutter.

“I don’t know. The weather, maybe. The lack of sun. The skyways – did you know they’re full of people walking slowly, four abreast? That they’re full of people in sweatshirts with tiny sleigh bells sewn onto them?”

“I’ve heard,” he says.

“Full of ‘em.”

“So you say,” he says.

There was a woman on the bus at the end of the day yesterday with three children in tow. While the bus crawled down the center of two lanes that, through the gradual deposit of five more inches of snow throughout the day had become just one, I watched her kids change seats every three minutes, sing “The Wheels On the Bus” five times and generally cause the other bus riders to turn their iPods up and pretend to be elsewhere.

The woman was not happy about it, but did nothing; and thus ensured that others felt her unhappiness.

There are so many reasons for feeling a bit down in December, aren’t there? A big clump of holidays in a row, crowded stores, difficult driving conditions, the view of a rapidly declining bank balance. Figure in a non-moving deadline and the sinking suspicion that one hasn’t done enough and you’ve got all the makings of a need for a session in front of a bowl of uncooked brownie batter.

Or the need for a good shaking.

Why in the world did we make this all so complicated! Is it possible that these people have been sent here to challenge me and my love of humanity? I demand a return to a simpler time, dagnabit!

So I did what any right-thinking human being does at this time of year. I went to a Cuban restaurant and ordered something I could take only a rudimentary stab at pronouncing and then bent my face over it, breathing deeply, eyes closed.

The catamaran left the shallower waters, majestically perched atop the water, and I didn't look back.

It serves no one, the overwhelmed feeling this time of year brings. But you know who does serve? Bars and restaurants. The smaller, the better. Look at the art work. Get the special. Consider the dessert. Consider it twice if you must.

Tip heavily if warranted.

And that, my friends, is what I learned yesterday.

Go forth and spread the word.