An Awkward Seat Can Benefit You in the Longrun

“Who is William Harrison?” that was one of the few Jeopardy questions I got right last night. The category was American Photo Album and there was the picture of President Harrison; I remembered the image because when I first saw Harrison’s picture, he reminded me of Tom Wilkinson and then I thought that they should do a movie on Harrison’s life (especially since he was the first president to die in office) and have Wilkinson play the lead role.

However, Harrison and Jeopardy faded away pretty quickly since my appetite was dominating my own existence. Once the episode of the long lasting game show ended, Eric, myself, and Rebecca went for a trip to Los Pinos to get some dinner. After dinner, a migration to the Red was made. Surprisingly at 8:10pm the bar was somewhat crowded. There was a small round table near the actual bar that could fit two people but three was slightly uncomfortable.

I retrieved a third barstool and we did the best we could with the sitting arrangements. Eric was originally on the outskirts of the table where the traffic of people fly by to get their desired beverages. This was verbally indicated by a mysterious old man who mentioned to Eric that he should scoot closer in. He then explained that Eric should get really close to Rebecca. Ah… the old man was revealing to be a creepy old man.

Eric did the action of scooting around the table, and thus, was somewhat closer to Rebecca. We all did the polite laughter for the old man because we knew he was trying to be funny with the said comment about getting really close to Rebecca. The problem was that this old man (who I decided was named Chester H. McEntomb) did not catch the notion that this laughter we were giving was a sign for him to walk away. He interpreted this laughter as a welcome. He then continued to exercise his vocal skills some more. Next question was to Rebecca on which of us two guys was she with. Her response, to throw a kink in the system, was both. This response did not quite click with Chester though.

I started tuning him out because he was just talking for the sake of simply talking. Somehow the topic of Adam and Eve came about and then Rebecca tried throwing an alternative out there with “What about Adam and Steve?” Again, the comment did not make much of an impact with him. He spoke some more and I decided to leave.

Of course, I didn’t leave the place, I went to the bar to obtain a beer and there was my favorite bartender (who I have mentioned in previous entries); I was explaining our current situation to her.

“See over there? That creepy old man decided to make himself comfortable at our table. I’m just wasting time until he leaves.”

“Do you want me to get one of the bouncers on him,” my dear Red friend offered.

“Oh, no, that’s not necessary. You see that woman he’s talking to? She’s got a taser ready in her left hand.”

“Seriously?”

“No. But wouldn’t that be exciting?” Ha ha, I made her laugh.

Once I got my beer, my phone rang and Chester was still there so I pursued my tele-conversation. I came back to the table and Chester was in full effect. He was leaning over the table and all his attention was to Rebecca. Eric looked bored out of his mind as Mr. McEntomb told his life story and how he was a true lady killer. I think.

Rebecca looked ready to go, so I conjured up a great exit strategy (and exit strategy I mean Chester leaving). I got the cellphone out and pretended someone was calling me.

“Hello? Hey, what’s up! Oh nothing, just at the Red right now. What’s that? Oh, yeah, Rebecca’s here! She’s right next to me. Do you want to talk to her? Sure, one sec!” I hand the phone off to Rebecca and explain that she wants to talk her.’

“Hello? Hey, what’s up!” Rebecca continued this decoy of a conversation. Chester was shut down. He then turned to me.

“So, what do you do? Are you a teacher too?” Chester must have asked Eric what he did.

“No, I raise money for a school,” I didn’t want to go into too much detail about what I did because I would have to kill him.

“How do you do that?”

“Well, I ask for donations from people of the community.”

“Here’s my donation,” when Chester said this, I did not quite realize what he did. I see him drop some things on our table. They were paper, but then I looked closer and they were dollar bills. Oh, he’s covering tip or something. On the contrary, these dollar bills were two $100 bills.

“This is $200! I can’t take this!” I projected to Chester to which he just shrugged me off and left our sight. Eric saw him go out the exit of the building. Rebecca wrapped up her conversation with the dead air and we were all in shock of what had just happened.

I felt guilty taking the money but he left before any of us could actually do something. I gave one of the bills to Rebecca since she was the desired object of affection for Mr. McEntomb and the other bill Eric and I will use when we go to San Francisco tonight.

I feel bad for getting Chester’s money since I wasn’t there to hear his life story like Eric and Rebecca did. They mentioned that his wife died and that he had barrels and barrels full of gold from a sunken treasure chest in his castle over the hill (actually that last part was false). I hope Rebecca writes up her angle of the situation on her site, and I hope Eric doesn’t expect me to split the hundred-dollar bill (just kidding!).

Shortly after Chester left, three barstools opened up at the actual bar. We shifted our sitting arrangements properly. The bartender (same one) asked what happened.

“Apparently if you just listen to an old and creepy man just long enough, he’ll give you money,” I revealed the bill, Rebecca showed hers as well.

“Oh my god, if I got $200 for every time I had to listen to some old and creepy man, I would be one rich woman.”