Erik moved to within 1.2 miles of my home. Tonight, I helped him move a last few items into his new house and then he and I went in search of a neighborhood bar.
I’ve been in the neighborhood about a year, but no neighbor wants to drink with me. Many people were drawn to Westerville due to its dry status and so many of my neighbors are not into neighborhood bars. I have been barless and must travel tens of miles to grab drinks with friends. Now that Erik is close by, that is all going to change.
Well, no it’s not. The only thing that is going to change is that Erik and I will both have an untouchable bar that is that much closer. We won’t go out more, we’ll just not be going out closer to home more.
But we do like to kid ourselves and our wives like to let us pretend that we can tell them whatever we want, so we were both allowed to go check out a local establishment.
It sucked. Bad, loud music. Horrible atmosphere. No Golden Tee.
Three beers and a free shot later, it wasn’t so bad.
The bartender had asked us what we were doing and I said that Erik was new to the area and we were interviewing bars. She said, “What do you mean?” And I calmly replied, “Where do you see this bar in five years.” Well, she didn’t get the joke (no one has so far) and she thought I was asking her where she was going to be in five years. She immediately thought that I cared for more than her ass crack sticking out of her too small jeans and took a liking to us. She asked for our names and we did not lie.
Fifteen minutes (and that free shot) later, we shuffled out the door with promises to return. She said, “I’ll remember your names because D comes before E.”
D comes before E. For the next five years Erik and I will be debating why D coming before E is better and or worse for the other person. We laughed the entire .9 miles back to his house.
We found our bar.
