Prognostication

After fixing our plumbing problem, I took my dad to O’Reilly’s for a burger and beers as a thank-you. 99.7 The Blitz was there, having a warm-up celebration for the Great Guinness Toast. The DJ offered free Guinness tee-shirts in exchange for participation in a game, so of course dad and I volunteered.

The game was to see who could crumble up half a sheet of newsprint the fastest using only one hand. You were not permitted to press the paper against anything: you could only use your hand. To my surprise, I won! In addition to the tee-shirt, I also got two tickets to a freestyle motocross event this weekend. At first, I figured I’d give the tickets to someone at work (if anyone was so inclined) because I have zero interest in motocross; but after some reflection I decided that Tyler might really get a kick out of it. So Tyler and I will be watching our first motocross this weekend. A full report shall follow.

A little later, the DJ offered another game: she read toasts to various U.S. cities, and participants needed to shout out the name of the city based on the clues in the toast. The first city was Chicago, which I gleefully yelled. Now I had two tee-shirts! St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Miami followed. Then the DJ and her assistant huddled together as they decided which city to offer next. I looked over at dad and said jokingly “It’s going to be Denver.”

The DJ started reading the clue: “This city is 5000 feet-” at which point dad shouted out “DENVER!” Now we both had two tee-shirts! I was flabbergasted that my wild guess was correct.

Dad gave both of his shirts to me; but on our way out one of the other patrons at the bar asked dad if she could have one of the shirts for her companion. It was her friend’s birthday, and she had really wanted to get one of the tee-shirts. Dad, ever the nice guy, happily obliged her, and handed over the shirt. At this point, the birthday girl came back from smoking a cigarette outside. The birthday girl’s leathery skin matched her raspy voice as she wheezed a sincere “Thank you!’ to my dad, and gave him a big hug.

Dad and I giggled all the way home.