how I won $100 in vegas (sorta)

It’s another one of those completely unexpected situations.

We all know that when the bartender offered a double for $3 more I couldn’t say no, since I really don’t know how to say no, and that when he asked if I wanted another and I sheepishly conceded- then he offered a single this time instead- I offered the same response. I drink fast. Just like I walk fast, and I talk fast, and I like to think that I live as if I have something to attend to that isn’t urgent so much as it’s a preferred use of time. I’d far rather lie on a hill somewhere and count clouds than soak in the scenery in the same place I’ve been for weeks or sip an airport-bar-drink. I’m not so good at the cease the moment when it’s not the moment I really had in mind. Gotta work on that.

Fast drinking does enable the fast talking, though, and slight bouts of communicative surliness. When for some reason my bag refuses to fit in the overhead bin this week I’ll have a sense of humor about it while cursing, and, not wanting to be that obnoxious person with the oversized carry-on (it usually really does fit! I swear! It got here as a carry-on!) I’ll quickly concede to checking it, pushing past the people getting on the plane (as politely as I can muster, knowing in the back of my head that this delays my arrival at home by a good half hour). While on the jetbridge watching my bag be sentenced to a ride around the baggage claim belt, I watch as they ask a woman to get out of her wheelchair, trying to hobble back to 22D. Knowing I’ll have to wait for my bag anyway, I offer to trade my 4C with her, never missing the opportunity to proclaim aloud (with an expletive or two) that, "sh!+, I’ll have to wait for the bag anyway, who cares if I’m in the back of the plane?" And so it goes. I sit in 22D and begin to devour the small sammich that will hopefully take the edge off of those stiff drinks.

Then they call my name. The owner of 3C never showed up, so they move me back up front, and hand me a $100 voucher for my "trouble." Wow. $100 for complaining about my bag’s delay.

Lesson: surly pays.