this thirty-two year old bartender i worked with at fridays last year, told me that she didn’t understand why anyone bothered smoking in the winter, “really it’s lame, i should just quit when it starts to get cold. you don’t smoke? you think you’re better then us? if you wanna talk to people and know them you should take it up for the summer, thats where we talk.” i told her i’d rather run on my days off. she rolled her eyes to my face.

she then told me that she “owned the bar” and that if i did anything wrong, i might as well give up and go home. i stared deeply into her brown eyes and deep wrinkles, wondering how long i had to maintain eye contact, before i was allowed to walk away and roll my eyes. she had yellow teeth and frizzy hair. she told me her regulars were what kept her there. thats when i woke up.

i drove home that night at two in the morning, wondering why anyone would ever work at a resturant as long as she did. why they would be okay calling it their life. why they would get pleasure out of yelling at a new bartender because she cleaned a scooner the wrong way.

i quit soon thereafter. if i was going to have a job, it was going to be easy, mindless, and not FRIDAYS. i took my old job back, and registered for classes at some community college in the northwest suburbs of chicago.

i started smoking again for the winter. i also broke five scooners when that thirty-two year old bartender wasn’t looking. she would’ve been so disapointed on both counts.

the moral of the story, because there isn’t one, is that sometimes it takes seeing someone who resembles your future, to make you run the other way. this ugly, old, wrinkly, fake tanned, yellow-toothed bartender might have been me in ten years. well not completely, she was married with two kids.

i am currently listening to kylie minogue. i don’t really know why. i thought i was smarter than that.