I know it's terrifically cliché to head straight for the booze when you get laid off, but I couldn't help it. For one thing, I like booze. For another thing, so do my friends. And to top it off, my friends have been very helpful in cheering me up.
The day I was laid off went something like this:
8:30 a.m. - Arrive at work.
8:45 a.m. - Spend unreasonable amount of time correcting someone else's grammar.
9:30 a.m. - Grab my third or fourth cup of coffee.
10:00 a.m. - Get called in to the HR manager's office. Get laid off.
10:10 a.m. - Start cleaning out my office. Proceed to say good-bye to friends. Wait around for my (former) boss to get out of her meeting with the CEO so I can say good-bye and thank you.
11:30 a.m. - Still waiting. Eat leftover pizza with Ray and Bill. Wait some more.
12:30 p.m. - Boss ends up not being all that concerned about my future. Greatly regret not having cigarettes to light up on my way out of the building.
12:45 p.m. - Finally home. Talked to my dad for a while. Spaced out. Tried to grasp the gravity of my situation.
1:00 p.m. - Text message from Krissy, "Visit me at work!"
2:00 p.m. - Arrive at The Adam's Mill.
Krissy kindly fed me delicious beer and listened to me bitch a bit. An upper-class restaurant bar in the middle of the day on a Wednesday is not exactly hopping. I appreciated her instinct to ply the recently unemployed with alcohol. I think that's as basic an instinct as we all have. Right up there with protecting babies from the wilderness and avoiding Taco Bell unless you're high. Mmmm. Chalupas. I tried a delicious bit o' tipple known as Seagram's 7 Dark Honey Whisky at Krissy's behest. It was great! Whisky I could drink straight without that sense of self-loathing that lingers afterward... and so it goes.
So I bounced back home and called my friend Dan, but not before picking up a bottle of the aforementioned whisky. We had a "scotch night" planned anyway and I wanted to bring something. It was a serendipitous planned evening of boozing, seeing as I definitely did not plan for a lay off when we decided scotch was in order on the preceding Monday.
Neither of us ended up having any scotch. Slight fail on our part, but we definitely made up for it.
Dan, his good friend Al, and I watched UConn cock up a game against Pittsburgh. I drank my honey whisky, Dan and Al had rum (Diplomático!) and cokes. Al left shortly after the basketball game as his wife is expecting, so he's expected to be home quite often.
In typical fashion, when left to our own devices, Dan and I turned on The Big Lebowski. The second he hit play, Dan turned to me and said, "you know, between the two of us, we've probably seen this movie a thousand times."
He wouldn't be far off. It is, without a doubt, one of the finest, most entertaining, enjoyable cinematic experiences you can have. And I bet you missed it the first time out of the gate. Granted, I know it has a bit of a cult following now, but so does The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and you don't see me wanting to dress as Frank N. Furter for Halloween. The Jesus Quintana, I'm all about. In fact, I need to get a purple bowling leisure suit for next year, but I digress. See the movie if you haven't. I promise you'll love it or be entirely bored. And if you're entirely bored, you're probably bored (or worse, confused) by Monty Python, too. And then we really can't be friends. So stop reading now and go watch something starring Pauly Shore.
Dan and I started to watch the movie, and found quickly that when it was just the two of us, we pretty much said every line before the actors. Entertaining, certainly, but we could do better.
Dan flipped on the Wii and set us up to bowl. The Big Lebowski was still blaring out of the speakers. We bowled a few frames. (I suck.) Drank a little more. (I'm good at that.) By our third frame, I asked if we could make White Russians (the Dude's drink of choice, you know). In what may have been a totally kickass montage in the film of my life (I don't remember a whole lot after I did The Jesus dance after a strike), we drank a ton of White Russians, Wii bowled, smoked cigarettes, and listened to, and then watched The Big Lebowski. I woke up on Dan's couch with one of the most vile hangovers of my life. He had to go to work (!!) and I was parked behind him. Can't say I don't think Dan's a trooper and a half. He drank more than I did!
It was important and cathartic for me to live the Big Lebowski a bit. Drop out for a day and night and drink, pity myself, and spend time with people I love and respect and can quote The Dude more accurately than the Bible.
No comments:
Post a Comment