Friday, January 20, 2012

I like setting up meetings for the following Tuesday...

So at some point either I or the student I'm setting up the meeting with types, "See  You Next Tuesday."

It makes me chuckle every time.

So this is literally my fourth attempt at writing this weeks blog. Yes, it's Friday. Yes I said I was going to do these things on Tuesdays, but I am really bad at this and my job has actually been making me work all week. The nerve!

One of the posts started out as a brief retrospective of my hatred of Tom Brady and the Patriots, ie Freedom and America. But I couldn't even get through the second paragraph. It was shit.

Then I had a couple of attempts at describing what makes a good kickball team.
That one actually came from a pretty solid base.
Bartending during the day at Marshall Street I have had the pleasure met four different kickball teams who play in the Saturday winter league.

Two of the teams are okay. The majority of them had never played kickball nor had they been to Marshall Street. So, you know me (or you don't, whatever), I was really excited to talk to them about all things kickball and to get them really drunk so they would like Marshall Street a lot (and so they would continue to talk to me about kickball).

It worked with one of them, and they're hooked. The second, not so much. Turns out I have absolutely nothing in common with pretentious, obnoxious, and extremely competitive young doctors at Strong. Okay, so I have two things in common with the pretentious and obnoxious things, but I'll talk about all the German Indie Garage Acoustic Metal I listen to and the foreign independent documentaries I watch in another blog... oh, you've never heard of them, yeah, I'm not surprised. (hipsters!)

The third was the worst though. (The fourth was inconsequential, they play for Dragonfly which isn't open during the day, but they'll never be back.) First they came in in waves, sat or stood under the projection screens while the playoff games were on, and then they made me come to them for their drink and food orders. Then they gave me shit about not coming often enough while I was the only bartender in a bar with 40 other people in it. (Woah is me!)

Then one of the dudes sent his burger back because he wanted it well done (without asking for it well done) and it was too perfect juicy and pink for him.

Then the dude demanded their team shot right before complaining that his free liquor wasn't very good and he'd like it sweeter the next time.

To top it all off the table of 10 or 11 ended up leaving me about a 6 dollar tip. F them so hard. I even smiled the whole time they were being awful themselves.

But all that got me thinking of how groups form and interact. Of the three groups, there was one or two obvious leaders in each crowd, but they didn't really dictate too much. The groups definitely had a shared persona and similar interests. I could see how they ended up together - Hey, I can't help notice that nobody likes you. Nobody likes me either, you want to hang out even though we really don't like each other. Yeah? Awesome! My dad never hugged me.

There must be a secret corner of the internet I've never heard of where all the D-Nuggets (Douche, not Denver) get together and decide they're going to stick together to try to ruin the day, night, week, hour of whomever they subject themselves to. Maybe they're all still on Myspace? shittymatch.com?

I will be the first to admit that I am not everyone's cup of tea. I know this and I've accepted it, it's part of growing up. I can be brash, I can be loud, sometimes I just don't shut the fuck up, but I'm also really nice to everyone the first time I meet them and give everyone a genuine chance while putting my own best foot forward (my best foot is my left one due to a couple of unfortunate surgeries when I was in high school).

You can tell me how much you hate that dude from work for doing all sorts of dickish stuff (STEPHEN, you forgot to put new toner in the God Damn copy machine! JESUS!"), but if he's really nice to me I'll probably still like him at least a little bit. I'll find something.

I didn't add the hearts...                          
but I'm not mad about it.
I'm not expecting everyone to fall in love with me right away.
Eventually, yes.
But right away, come on now, who am I, Fabio from Top Chef?  That guy's an angel sent right from heaven. When Padma met him she instantly told Salman Rushdie to shove Satanic Versus up his B.

Designing, understanding, and navigating social constructs is one of the most usefulskills a person can have. Where we get messed up is knowing that very few people actually have those skills. Even the people whose occupations require them to excel in these areas, politicians, teachers, counselors, drug dealers; are often only adept at dealing with their target niche of constituents.

Think broad. Widen the spectrum. Nobody is going to make you happy 100 percent of the time , so we need to teach ourselves to find, hold on to and remember the best in everyone. Whether that means falling in love and staying together forever or simply not murdering them because you don't enjoy jailhouse showers (they don't rock) or they were nice to a puppy one time (it was a really cute puppy), we should all try to find that one thing.

That one thing can't define the relationship though.

Not murdering someone or briefly feeling intensely positive feelings for someone should not outweigh the sum of that persons actions. People change. Friends might have been positive figures in your life at some point and you'll always remember them somewhat positiviely and at least be cordial based on that, but that doesn't mean they have to be your friend for the rest of your life.

You'll change too.

I have. I used to be way less awesome. I still have room for improvement, I know it. I could totally be two inches taller and so many more people would respect me for it.

This took a twist for the ranting, but to get back to my initial purpose and point of view -

Not every kickball team is I'm Kick James. In fact, none have even come close. We just work, and we're just good at being together. Even when we get too excited, take things a little personally, and get intense, we always bounce back and remember why we're there (beer). Even the teams we've seen (the caped people, the birthday with the crowns, the generally nice yet totally forgettable people) did not understand us and they never will. They're not meant to.

If you're not affiliated with Kick James, you should really consider somehow getting your foot in the door... but you probably can't play because we already have 92 people on the damn team.
I'm an awful captain.

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