I am tall, long armed, big footed and generally considered ugly. I could be the poster child for birth control. You can tell this by simply looking at me and what I am wearing. This particular day I am wearing my red Iowa State University t-shirt, flip flops from my Hawaii stay a few years ago and a pair of blue mesh Champion shorts. Though I am a nerd I always act cool. Sometimes it manifests itself in how I walk down a hallway, the street or even across a parking lot. I often catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, or take a quick look at my reflection in a car window as I strut towards the Target entrance. I suck in my gut as far as I can, throw my head back and try to look ten years younger than I am. I make every effort to look like I know where I am going when I don’t. It is true. I am as average and geeky as they come, but in new situations I go to great lengths to make sure I look cool. Typically, I fail.
Sometimes I jet off all alone for two or three days just to relax (I’ve never had a problem putting myself first). What am I relaxing from, you ask? Beats the hell out of me. It isn’t as if I am a hard worker or have a life full of stress. I am a teacher. That is stressful sometimes, but I’ve been doing it for fifteen years and I have a routine. Having a routine in your career means that you coast along, you do a good job, but you aren’t out there putting out fires or making radical changes in the world. I have always put myself first when it comes to mental health, relaxation and rejuvenating my soul. So, when I jet off for a rejuvenation weekend I take a shuttle from the airport of whichever lucky city is hosting me for the said trip, check into the hotel and pretty much camp around the pool for days on end, take naps and frequent all the restaurants on the premises several times each day of my stay. One day, on a recent trip to Phoenix, I blew down to the lobby and stumbled up to the bar at a few minutes after twelve-noon. The bartender was filling the ice bin and putting bottles of liquor on the shelves as I approached. I blurted out, in a voice much louder than I calculated it would be when I was formulating what I would spit out, “You open?” The guy nearly dropped the bottle of Absolut Vodka as he whipped his head around, “Yah, man.” His voice conveyed confidence in his opinion that I was a dolt. How could the bar not be open, indeed? After all, the bartender was right there, stocking the shelves and filling the ice bin. The TV’s were on and bowls of nuts were lining the bar.
I climbed up on the barstool at the end of the bar. Or rather, I tried to climb up on it. I stand 6’5” tall so you would think that I would be able to just effortlessly sit down at a high barstool, right? Well, the truth is that I managed to get my flip flops caught on the brass foot rest below the bar. My cell phone, room key card and money tumbled onto the counter. The word graceful slid through my mind like it was a fleeting idea that only applied to people with class. Guys don’t need or want to be graceful. We just need to be “cool” and not stumble into a scene.
“Easy there, big fella,” the bartender said with a smirk and a laugh.
“First day with the new flip flops!” I spat out trying not to look so much like an idiot. It was too late. I had already demonstrated that I was new at this walking thing. What’s more to all of this is why, at age thirty-eight, mind you, do I give a rip what anyone thinks about me? Does it really truly matter what strangers think of you when you know that back home you have close friends who like you with all of your stupidity and unique attributes? Not really, but to me it does for whatever reason.
So, in order to try and show that I was really a hip guy, I made sure I left a big tip. This was so that when I stumbled out of the elevator and tripped my way into the bar to order dinner that night or lunch the next day, the bartender would overlook how poorly I entered a room because he would prefer to remember that I was a big tipper. Why the hell am I a big tipper? I teach school for a living. It isn’t like I have a secret vault behind a Monet painting in my living room jammed full of hundred dollar bills. Rather, I have five or six bucks tucked in the ash tray of my car for emergency parking money. Sometimes that fund runs low because I need to swing through McDonald’s to nourish myself with an ice cream cone, a large iced drink or one of those fantastic McGriddle sandwiches that I have become addicted to secretly and silently in the mornings on the way to school. I also have anywhere from ten to fourteen dollars in the mug on top of my refrigerator at home. So, if a crisis hits, I would be hard pressed to come up with cash, but leaving this bartender, who I wanted to remember me for being a big tipper and not a stumbler who hadn’t mastered sitting down yet, a big tip, seemed like the right thing to do.
It’s funny how life works. That evening, when I came crashing into the bar of the Radisson, the same bartender greeted me with a big smile, poured me the same drink I had earlier and was at my beck and call because he knew that the tall, dopey, stumbling when sober guy, was here to leave another big tip.
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