Bloody honest people
Yesterday afternoon I made a bit of a tactical error when it came to dinner plans. A group was going to dinner early ... but I had had a late lunch and didn't want to go out to eat when I wouldn't be hungry yet. But when I asked a few folks about their dinner plans later in the evening ... well, long story short, I ended up eating at home and finishing up my leftovers from lunch.
And I was feeling, perhaps, a touch lonely, as one is wont to when intentions to be social fall through.
Since I had to be up at 4:30am to be ready for the San Jose Christmas parade, I didn't want to go out for a late or distant dinner or be up too late, so I figured, "Eh, I'll just prep for the parade and catch up on my new watches on FA, then go to bed." Earlier in the day I'd bought a new beer to try, so I grabbed a bottle from the fridge. That was the start of my mistake.
The problem with browsing FA when you're already feeling lonely, and when maybe you're still not 100% over certain emotional issues of the past year, is ... well, I kept looking at commissions that people had got for (or of) themselves and their mates ... and of course, when they posted them, they would comment about how much they loved their special someone, and he'd comment back "I love you too" and whatnot (although usually far mushier than that) ... and I saw the couples who had those cute kissy icons where they kiss each other if you line them up right, which are just dreadfully cute and lovey-dovey ...
And as I said to a friend of mine on IM, "Sometimes I feel as though everyone's got someone but me." It's not true, of course, but ... now I was melancholy.
When you're melancholy, and you have a drink, you feel better ... for about ten minutes. Then the drink starts to wear off and you just feel even more melancholy because you're sad and sobering up at the same time; and, well, you're still just as alone, aren't you? At that point, you have two options: say bleep it and go to bed, or pour yourself another drink. Very few people can exercise the first option, and neither did I: I poured myself another drink. With each drink, the logic of pouring another so that you don't have to face the melancholy gets stronger, and the judgment and willpower get weaker, so ...
Come 2:00am I was very very melancholy and rather drunk, and was consistently not making sense to anyone I was talking to online. On top of that ... well, I wasn't going to be up at 4:30am for the parade, was I? The call time for the parade was 6:00am. I wasn't even going to be sober enough to drive by 6:00am. Congratulations, husky. You may have had a handful of "melancholy drunks" in the past year, but this is the first time that one of them will have caused you to fail not only yourself, but also your friends. You've failed your friends because you got drunk. Well done. You know what they call it when you start doing that? They call it an alcohol problem.
Then I was very very very melancholy and more than a little ashamed, and I took myself to bed and cried until I fell asleep.
I slept until noon. I expected this. There had been no point in setting an alarm.
When I awoke, I had to decide what I was going to do. Step 1, of course, was going to be, "Continue to lie in bed until I feel a bit less hung over." But what after that?
When you make a mistake, there are three things that you need to do. First, fix the situation so that you won't repeat the mistake. To that end, I knew what I had to do: if you're developing a problem with drinking alone, don't drink alone. And just as, when you're on a diet, you don't keep bags of Doritos in the house to tempt you until you give in to them ... well, if I'm not going to drink alone, I don't want any alcohol in the house that I'm not going to be sharing with others or giving away. Step 2: take what's left of those opened bottles of Jägermeister and peppermint schnapps and whatnot, and pour them down the drain. Pouring the source of your problem down the drain actually feels pretty darn good. Oh, and that beer I bought to try it out? It's awful. If I were to give it to someone as a gift, I'd never be able to look them in the eye again. Down the drain it goes as well. The rest of my beer goes into the trunk of my car to be given away, since grabbing a beer out of the fridge is so easy and you generally drink one bottle all by yourself. The bottles of wine ... those can stay, since I wouldn't open a bottle of wine to drink all by myself, and wine is the perfect thing to share with others over dinner.
Second, make amends to any parties you've hurt. Granted, in this case the "hurt" was that I said I'd do the parade and then missed it, and it's not as though it didn't proceed just fine without me, but still ... I said I would do something, and then I failed and flaked. I could just stay at home and hide from all of that, but ... no, that doesn't cut it. After I was done pouring stuff down the drain, I was going to get in my car and go down to the Hilton anyway to see if there were anything I could still do to help ... and I was going to apologise, face to face, to the friends I'd let down. And no pussyfooting around it, either, like "Oops, I forgot to set an alarm". Nope, the full, honest, lame story: I was drunk. On top of that, the group always goes out after the parade and has dinner at a local pizza place. When the check arrives, I'm going to snag it and see how much it is ... and if it's not a totally insane amount, I'm going to stick in my card and give it back to the waitress and quietly buy dinner. Food is a good apology.
Third, once you've done the first two, forgive yourself. That is the source of strength that gives you the power not to do it again.
So I went down to the Hilton, arriving around 3:00pm, a mere nine hours late, and did what I could to help out. I apologised to the two folks who happened to be in the room when I arrived (they gave me hugs because they're awesome). And later at dinner, when the check arrived, I grabbed it, saw that it was a reasonable amount ($387, tip included), and stuck in my card and gave it back to the waitress before she got away. This is where my cunning master plan suffered its first problem: to make things more efficient in a group of 22 people, the waitress had actually distributed several copies of the check, since we were split among a few tables even though we were all on the same account. That meant, even though I'd already paid for dinner, people at other tables were collecting cash and pulling out their credit cards. At my own table, I expressed a desire to pay for dinner to the closer folks within earshot ... and was rebuffed: "That's WAY too much for you to pay! I'm throwing in some cash anyway!", and the check binder got out of my control and got passed down the table. Drat.
I tried to scamper around and tell people, "Hey, I've already paid, my treat", but it wasn't working. Some people thought that meant I was pulling the ATM trick and trying to get cash while racking up airline miles, and the restaurant was too noisy for me really to explain otherwise, especially to people feverishly trying to do Restaurant Maths. Some people got the idea that I was trying to treat but wouldn't let me. I finally gave up ... it's cool to throw in cash if you want to, but you don't have to, it is my treat unless you're adamant about paying, yes, we're good, I'm sure you've paid enough, no, take a few dollars back, please, the tip was included, and put that credit card away ... at least perhaps I can end up treating for a hundred bucks or so, if I'm lucky. Bloody honest people, can't get them to short a restaurant check to save my life.
So I leave the restaurant with a big, uncounted wad of notes in my pocket, and a few E-mails from PayPal where people gave me virtual money. I'll count it when I get home ... and it had better not be too much.
So yeah. $399. Not only did I get a "free" dinner, I made twelve bucks. This is just wrong, although it is a very impressive display of the group's integrity and ability to do restaurant maths. In spite of my protests, every single person paid what he owed and more (we were over on cash even though, of course, I had put no cash in).
The parade and the accompanying "Christmas in the Park" celebration are put on jointly by the City of San Jose and by a local charity set up to run the thing with the help of private sponsors and donations. The city is cash-strapped and is cutting back its share, so the charity is pleading for money ... they need to raise $200,000 to replace the funds they're losing from the city, or next year the events may have to be cancelled. We love doing this parade and Christmas in the Park. It would be very sad if it went away.
A cheque is on its way to the charity. My treat.