Saturday, February 28, 2004 :::
 
Is there anything more beautiful than Washington in the springtime? Well, lots of things, actually, but it ranks up there. And it's not really Spring. We're having an Indian Spring. In the winter with the coldest day in a 100 years, we get this vacation from suffering. It has happened before. Perhaps 7 years ago, we had this Indian Spring, and the spring bulbs all thought it was time to come out. This perhaps is the origin of the phrase "dim bulb," because they are not really very smart. Up came the crocuses and daffodils, and down they went again when the snows came back. One suspects "dim bulb" refers to lights, but it does seem to have a broader application. A week of this weather in March, and we are likely to have a real Spring with no bulbous flowers in April. Pity. They are so ephemeral, and so beautiful.

Friday found A Mind That Suits all at sixes and sevens. Heretofore, he has invariably spent Friday nights at Ye Olde Neighborhood Pub parked at the bar eating a hamburger and reading with Young John offering hours of entertainment. But everything is gone from Ye Olde Neighborhood Pub except the fixtures, and those are probably walking out the door as this is being written. What to do, what to do? Why, head up to the Ye Newe Neighborhood Pub where Young John and friend Jorge now work. Add one extra Metro ride ($1.20) and subtract the lower taxes on food in Maryland (perhaps $.40) and you get an increase in cost of eighty cents. (If one spends one's time reading, the extra ten minutes each way on Metro have no value plus or minus at all.)

The staff from Ye Olde Neighborhood Pub was moved up to Ye Newe Neighborhood Pub exactly because Ye Newe Neighborhood Pub was a disaster. The only place where A Mind That Suits could chat with Young John and friend Jorge was sitting next to the waiter station where the waiters picked up their drinks, and he must say, after many years managing food service staffs, that among the existing staff at Ye Newe Neighborhood Pub, there are four waiters who should be forced out as soon as possible. (It's easy to do: give them all the bad shifts, and only four of those. And when arguments break out, side presumptively with whoever is arguing with them, as the other staff are, presumptively and almost indubitably, in the right.) It was a brutal corporate decision, but it was in fact a wise one.

Plus, A Mind That Suits, who by profession is surrounded by youngsters and enjoys that for all the right reasons, became instant friends with the other bartender, a young lad named Bryan who actually convinced the venerable University of Virginia to give him a degree in poetry. But he is not a "poetic" lad. In fact, he looks as if he played soccer at a smaller, underfunded Division III liberal arts school, and he is very masculine, despite the blonde features that make him look too young to even enter Ye Newe Neighborhood Pub, much less work there. He displays the roly-poly physique of the writer, it is true, but he could shout with the best of them. Food service is a toughening experience for lads who live in their minds. A Mind That Suits knows this very well. Going into food service was the best decision he ever made, after becoming a Christian.

Old friend Young John is a basketball-playing biologist, all spatial relationships and speed, and new friend Young Bryan is plodding and deliberate and about a foot shorter, so it made from some funny sights, with arms reaching under and over and a blonde bowling ball nearly knocking over a black-haired pin.

But those waiters. Oh, my.

One transcendantly incompetent young lady did the inexcusable, which is enter a drink order and then immediately wander over to ask the bartenders, who were obviously swamped, where it was. She also has bad judgment in words, because she blurted out, "How's my wine?" Young Ryan burst out "Don't do that," but Young John, whose likely profession does not involve words in the sense that his wil for Young Bryan, came up with the much better, "Pretty good." That answer earned well deserved kudos from both New friend Young Bryan and A Mind That Suits. Put the question and answer together, and you will see why A Mind That Suits has a hard time repressing smiles while disciplining recalcitrant boys.

Have a good one...

::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 12:59 PM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.