Now Batting

Friday night I had a date, and we were going to go to Margaritas but the wait was ridiculous, so we walked across the street to the Skellig instead. It's your run of the mill Boston-area Irish pub, complete with drunk fools having a going away party and sitting right next to us. Whenever one of them would crash into our table, making our beers wobble precariously, the rest of them would yell, "Leave those poor people alone! They're just trying to eat their dinner! You're scaring them!" and either screech with laughter or slur apologies. Come on, people, I was on a first freakin' date. If that beer had ended up in my lap, I would've killed first and asked questions later.

Then at one point our waitress came over and said, "The drunk people are picking up your tab. So what do you say, another round?" We thanked them (it WAS a classy move from people I had dismissed as decidedly unclassy) and escaped to the bar to finish our beers.

The guy was nice enough. He was eight years older than me, which wouldn't necessarily be a big deal, but I just wasn't really into him. Some of my family from Jersey (aunt, uncle, and two cousins) were coming into town that night and would be staying at my apartment for the weekend, so I used that as my excuse to end the evening a little early, even though Favorite Cousin reported that they were still a few hours away at that point.

Date and I walked to the parking lot and I did the preemptive don't-kiss-me one-armed hug, waited until he drove away, and then got out of my car and went back to Margaritas, where some friends of mine were at the bar drinking Coronas and waiting for a table. (Jeez, sometimes life is like 90210. "Oh gawd, you guys, I'm across the street on the most boring date. I'll ditch him and meet you at the Peach Pit!") They ended up coming back to my apartment for more beers, which I was trying to pawn off because I'm still overstocked. (At my Halloween party I ran out of alcohol somewhere around midnight, so for New Year's Eve I overbought and encouraged friends to overbring. Luckily, Favorite Cousin is a senior in college and a frat boy, so he was happy to take the surplus off my hands.)

Anyway, once we were back at my place I went up to the guest room to make sure it was pulled together for my aunt and uncle. And there, on the window, was a bat. A small one, not a big Dracula nightmare, but still. I must have screamed, although I don't remember screaming, because suddenly Keith ran up the stairs to find out who was murdering me. I hid behind him saying helpful things like, "Okay, open the door. NO, BE CAREFUL! Okay, try it. But slowly. IT'S RIGHT THERE! DO YOU SEE IT? IT'SRIGHTTHERE!" He suggested I get a bucket and while I was wandering around downstairs lamenting my lack of a bucket, Favorite Cousin called.

Me: There's a bat in my guest room!
FC: Oh, awesome! It'll be like Tommy Boy.

I never even saw that movie, but my thought is that if you have a bat in your home, it's best to have someone coming into your home who thinks it's no big deal and is happy to take care of it. Which is what they did. My aunt saw the thing twitching on the floor and pronounced it "so cute!" They caught him in an empty box, put him on my patio, and basically created a delightful bat condo for him. Cousin/Godson, whom you might remember from epic advetures such as this, went outside the next day and took pictures of it with his phone. I suggested, oh I don't know, KILLING THE SON OF A BITCH and was immediately shot down. So now, in the sitcom that is my life, I have a kooky bat for a next door neighbor. The bat is my Kramer.