Today, Jeff and I made the somewhat bad call of going to the National’s opening day. It was 40 degrees and raining, which was the only basis for the bad call. But seriously? I don’t know how to dress appropriately for cold. I assumed my blue jeans, long sleeve t-shirt, puffy vest and eddie bauer wind breaker type north face-esque jacket would cut it.
Spoiler alert, it didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a horrible experience, just horrible weather. And we knew it was going to be horrible weather. Mostly we had a fun time. We even pro-con-pro’ed it later just to make sure*.
But by the 5th inning we just couldn’t take it any more and hiked it down the road to watch the rest of the game at a bar drink beer. There was a little African man sitting a few seats away from where we were sitting, wearing a nice suit, holding a brief case and drinking a beer. I didn’t think twice when he started up a conversation with us. Oh, until he started talking.
This man was shit faced. Beyond shit faced, I’m not sure he knew where he was. Between his accent, English clearly not being his first language, his slurring and general incoherence I was only able to make out a few key phrases, but here’s what I think I learned.
- His phone died so he couldn’t check on his investors.
- He owns a hotel in New Hampshire.
- He has no idea how people in DC are doing. Are they doing ok? he doesn’t know.
- He was invited to a prince’s wedding. Yeah, he was there. HE WAS THERE.
- His phone died so he couldn’t check to see if his cousin was at war or not.
- He just bought a hotel, but doesn’t know how his investors are doing.
If those Nigerian Business men on Craigslist are actually real, I think I met an authentic one today. After a few minutes I just turned my back to him. I know it’s rude but I just couldn’t handle this guy. Then he started screaming
“I’M GOING TO GO NOW!”
He didn’t.
At one point, the manager, who was an olive skinned, dark haired man, came up to our African investor and told him that if he didn’t calm down he was going to have to leave. The man said “are you Puerto Rican?” “No” the manager replied. “But if I have to come over here again I’m going to make you leave, ok?” “guantanamera?” The drunk answered.
To which he began to sing, loudly for the next 10 minutes. This shifted into
his rendition of “Move Bitch” until he finally was escorted off of the premises.
We then stumbled across the street to the national portrait gallery and made out in a museum. Did I say somewhat bad call? I meant mostly awesome.
Pro - Baseball
Con - cold
Pro - guantanamera
*Pro-Con-Pro was a positive thinking exercise we used in college when harshly judging the girls attempting to get into our sorority while going through rush. Example, one might say:
“Pro - Um…She looks good in purple.
Con - I swear to god she said she told me she only got into college because her mother was boinking the dean of admissions and that she didn’t have a high enough SAT score for community college.
Pro - Uh, well, she’s a pretty honest person.”
