It wasn’t anything I could have expected, that’s for sure. Life had done a number on me earlier that year and all my energy had been going to merely keeping rent paid and the lights on in my old haunted place. Little did I know that the (somewhat irresponsible) decision to duck into a bar and have a quick beer would change my life forever…
Our story begins several months earlier, at a friends house, waking up on top of a pile of dirty laundry. I was on vacation and to say I had perhaps the worst hangover ever experienced by a living human is an understatement. Just now it was the office calling to tell me that the client had pulled the plug and that we were all out of a job. This happened on April 1 too, by the way, so it took a while for the folks back at home to figure out if it was real or an elaborate and cruel April Fool’s joke.
But it was real. I hung up the phone with my head throbbing. Fired on my day off. That sucks.
Fast forward a few months. When the call came down I realized that I had some cash stacked and that I would be all right for a while. I collected my severance and took what was supposed to be a couple weeks but turned into a several month sabbatical from the working world. What did I do? Mostly drank beer and smoked cigarettes and played the guitar with other unemployed cigarette-smoking and beer-drinking guitar players. I didn’t do much productive, anyway. Wait, I guess I did start a t-shirt company and make some extra cash doing that, but that’s about it.
It was right about the end of the summer when my roommate announced she was moving out. Ok, that’s not really a big deal and she promised me her half of everything and we were (I thought) really good friends so I didn’t have any reason to believe she would move out while I was gone and leave me holding the bag on rent, bills, and an exceptionally large phone bill full of calls to Europe, never to be seen or heard from again.
I cleared out my bank account and paid what I could, which unfortunately did not include the electric bill. It was suddenly time to get a job. I wrote the check for the rent and walked to the office to drop it off.
Why was I walking? Oh yeah, back before most of this happened, I was driving home one rainy night and apparently some kids had placed some construction barricades in the middle of the street, which I hit, and which cracked the window on my vintage Benz so that water seeped in and fried the entire electrical system, leaving me riding the Chuck Taylor Express whenever I wanted to go anywhere.
So, bad luck piled on top of worse luck and the disconnect notices began rolling in. I did manage to secure a new roommate, so that was good at least. But I was now scraping change from the couch to afford smokes and ramen, so that sucked more than quite a bit. The next month rolled around with no luck in finding a job, and no money to send those pesky electric bill people. I wrote the next rent check, completely draining the last of my reserves, and set out to the office a couple miles away to drop it off.
On my way home I decided I would stop into this certain pub and have a beer and look through the classifieds for a job. Once inside I saw the sign that said, “Help Wanted.” I asked what kind of help they were looking for and the bartender called the manager for me. What luck that I knew and liked the manager as in my role for my previous employer I had set up and run some events for her. She said she needed security and barback and asked if I had ever done either. I said nope but I could learn quickly. She asked if I could start right away and five minutes later this dude was showing me how to cut lemons and limes.
I worked through the afternoon cleaning glasses and replacing kegs and that evening I became the doorman. A couple of hours into that second shift I glanced up and this guy I knew was walking up to the bar with the prettiest girl I had ever seen. When they got to me she smiled and said hi and informed me that she worked there, but was just off tonight. I’m not sure if this really happened at the time, but in memory, whenever she tells me that I hear Mr. Burns in my head.
Because I knew I had to get to know this girl, douche bag boyfriend be damned.
And, well, get to know her I did. She broke up with him shortly after and we hung out a bit after work and a couple times on our days off. I worked at the bar as often as I could and gathered cash to dig myself out of the hole I had gotten into.
I walked into that bar in September and in November got a call from the HR department of my current employer telling me that I had been referred by a manager from the old job. I obviously accepted the offer and by January I was completely dug out of my financial hole and had some cash to take a nice girl out for a drink every now and then.
And since January 25, 2004 I’ve had the privilege of claiming the prettiest girl in the room as my sweetheart. We’ve been together nine years today.
And here’s to 100 more.
Here’s to 100 more