Not Quite IHOP

Some number of years ago (I want to say “five” but I’m sure it was more like “fifteen”) I was back home and had a rare opportunity to hang out with one of my best friends. Living in different states (and being all growed up) these chances don’t exactly come along very often. This is quite the contrast to when we were younger. Take my soon-to-be sixteen year old daughter, for example. If she detects that she’s going to be separated from her friends for more than six hours, they act as if they were being shipped off to Barrow, Alaska for six months. On the other hand, if I see friends more than once per presidential administration, I consider it a wonder.

Anyway, we were hanging out at my parents house, positively giddy with anticipation at our big evening out. We went through the usual exciting routine:

“So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“We could go out?”
“Yeah, we could go out.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know.”

Through some miracle, most likely my mom pushing us out the door at gunpoint, we decided to go hang out at a corner bar. I don’t remember the name of the place—I’m sure my sisters do—so we’ll just call it Mickey McMack O’Mally’s. It was noisy, and smokey, and we were soon wondering where on earth my mom got that gun.

We ordered a couple beers and moved slowly and pointlessly from one end of the bar to the other. After a few minutes of nothing, Evan looked up and said, “Hey look. See that bottle up there?” He pointed to the glass shelf behind the bar. “Which one?” “The one over on the right. Doesn’t that look like a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s?” “Yes. Yes it does,” I said.

At this point our odd brains launched into a very strange alternate reality. We imagined a bar that served not drinks but pancakes and syrup. The place would be noisy, and smokey, and still called Mickey McMack O’Mally’s, but bottles of maple syrup would line the glass shelves and people would order stacks of flapjacks. Patrons would do shots of syrup (if something that slow could still be called a “shot”) and behind the bar the grillmaster was stationed, spatula in hand and ready to please.

We joked about things like new drinking games and new terminology that would have been invented in such a reality. Our favorite was probably the poor soul dragging himself to work in the morning with a horrible hangover. His coworker laughs and asks, “Rough evening?” To which he replies, “Boy I got really sticky last night.”

Well, it was funny to us. I guess you had to be there.

So happy Friday everyone! Hope you have a great day and I’ll meet you at O’Mally’s tonight. Oh, and don’t forget the wet wipes.