Ralph and Chuck

For Father’s Day on Sunday, my Pops and I decided to get together for two things we definitely share interest in; a few beers and a few games of pool.  Neither of us really get into the whole Hallmark holiday aspect of days like Father’s Day, so we just wanted to hang out and shoot the shit together and celebrate our father-son relationship by talking about sports, women, and just life in general.

So we’re at Crosstown shooting some pool and having a few beers, just having a good time in general.  On a side note, I really like hanging with my Pops because he’s basically a 54 year old version of a teenager in many ways.  He’s hilarious and care-free.  We get along great. At the table next to ours is a girl and her boyfriend who are talking loudly about getting DUIs, anger management classes, and buttsex.  You stay classy, San Diego.  My dad finds a great deal of humor in all of this though, and at one point leans over to me and says, “I bet that girl would beat the shit out of you in the bedroom.”  Fair enough, Pops.

About an hour into us being there, I see a couple guys walk in who I graduated with and know very well from high school.  We’ll call them Ralph and Chuck.  I need to preface this story by telling you that they are both genuinely nice guys and they both mean well, but they aren’t exactly my two best friends.  I also should mention that Ralph is well-known as a compulsive liar, only I don’t think he knows that we all know he lies about everything.  And when I say he lies about everything, I mean, he lies about EVERYTHING.  Most people lie to gain some kind of benefit from the lie, but Ralph will lie just for the hell of it.  Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, onto the story.

So Ralph and Chuck see me when they come in, and ask if they can join us.  Of course, the more the merry.  They tell us that today is Ralph’s birthday.  Oh, happy birthday, Ralph.  So because it’s his birthday, Ralph decides to take a couple shots.  After a couple games of pool, I offer to buy him a drink for his birthday and he gets … yep, a shot.  Hey, I’m not here to judge anyone.  If you wanna crush shots of Jag and Goldschlager like a frat boy during spring break, go nuts bro.

Shortly after the shots go down, Ralph throws in a chew big enough to make Hammen’s dad proud.  Now, I’m not the smartest man alive, but this all looks like a combination of things that beg for an upset stomach in the near future.  Whatever, he’s a big boy, he can handle his business.

So within maybe an hour of Ralph and Chuck being there, my dad and I are chatting, and I look over and I see Ralph hunched over with his hands on his knees a few feet away from our table.  My first inclination is that he’s spitting out his baseball-sized chew, so I don’t pay it any mind.  Then Ralph disappears for a solid ten minutes.  No clue where he went, but I presumed he was going to the bathroom.  When he returns, he’s pale, he’s been sweating, and he looks really faint.  I ask him if he’s ok and he assures me he is.  Then, he suddenly turns toward the area he was once hunched over at and says, “Oh f*ck, someone threw up on the floor!”

Someone?  Someone?!?!?  It was obviously you, Ralph, you freakin tool.  Sure enough, I look over at the exact place he was standing ten minutes ago and there is a puddle of puke on the floor … three feet away from the garbage can.  I look at the puke, I look at him, look back to the vomit, him, vomit, him, vomit, him.  Then, he looks at me, pale as ever, and says, “You know who it was?”  Before I can say anything, he comes back with this bombshell: “It was that f*cking girl over there!” And as he says it, he points to the girl who has been sitting with her boyfriend at their table for the last two hours and hasn’t moved.

Again, I’m not the smartest man alive, but I think I would have noticed if the girl in the low-cut shirt had walked over to us, thrown up all over the floor and walked away.  I confer with my dad, and he agrees.  I’ve seen this scenario play out before, and I know Ralph is being classic Ralph and lying his ass off.  So I decide to do what I know needs to be done, let it die.  If I just ignore the situation, Ralph will shut up and I’ll stop contemplating punching him in the face for lying again.  So, I try to let it die, but Ralph won’t.  He keeps talking about the girl who “came over and puked by our table.”  He even goes so far as to tell one of the servers, a good friend of mine and someone also well-schooled in Ralph’s lies and shenanigans, that it was the girl who puked on the floor.  We share a look that says it all.  He knows it was Ralph who, well, ralphed on the floor, and nothing more needs to be said.

I share this story for one simple reason.  Sometimes when we’re drunk, we think we’re capable of getting away with a lot more than we can.  But don’t ever fool yourself into believing that you can blow chunks a mere 36 inches away from three people and not have them know it was you.  Also, don’t be a lying douchebag.  Ok, so I had two reasons to share the story.

One love,

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