August 29, 2004

• Cathy's Birthday Jinx

  Every young lady deserves a pleasant birthday celebration. Cathy wanted two, one with her buddies and a second for a larger group, which included her parents and some older friends, Don and Anita Bohensky. Both should have been enjoyable and problem free.

  They weren't.

  As Cathy was preparing to go bar crawling with her buddies, her hair brush got stuck in her hair. She had been attempting to curl some of her very long hair, a bit at the front, into a tight curl that would function as bangs. She got her long hair tightly wrapped onto the brush and it wouldn't unwrap.

  Cathy worked at it for a while alone. Then, with no results, she asked me to help. I tried prying the hair out one strand at a time. This worked for about an inch at one end of the brush. That left a major problem, the brush bobbing right at her forehead.

  She didn't want to cut the hair. That would have solved the problem but would have left its mark.

  She decided to see if wetting the hair with conditioner would lubricate it enough to begin freeing it up. But hair swells when moist, so the problem became worse.

  Delia arrived home and took over. Within a minute she was laughing uncontrollably, which didn't help the problem and got Cathy close to tears. Then Delia started snipping the bristles off of the brush with a pair of scissors. Removing the bristles seemed to help but Delia's method left too much bristle behind. I got a pair of pliers and started pulling the bristles out.

  I had gotten about 75% of the bristles out when Cathy's friend Tiffany arrived. Tiffany took over because my arms were tired. She managed to pull a few more bristles before deciding it was too awkward and too tiring of the arms. Instead, she concentrated on freeing the hair, now that we had an advantage. Eventually she got the brush untangled completely, after a bit over two hours of being bound to Cathy.

  Cathy quickly restyled her hair to minimize the damage, then went out. That was the night before Cathy's birthday.

  On the evening of Cathy's birthday, we went to an Irish pub called Hooley's, as far as possible from the stadium (Chargers game) and the Gaslight District (some kind of Street Scene celebration). Cathy had a table for fifteen reserved. Twenty people showed up. We fixed it by adding a table and a few chairs, something the people at the bar could have done for us but didn't.

  Live music was provided by a quartet (guitar, bass, drums and violin) who called themselves The Ballad Mongers. They played a mix of '60s, '70s, Irish drinking songs and their own compositions. They were amplified but not to the point of pain, or even unpleasantness, and the patio being covered with a cloth cover for a ceiling helped keep the sound enjoyable. They played with a lot of enthusiasm and a good deal of skill. When I informed them that it was Cathy's birthday, they played several songs for her besides the traditional "Happy Birthday to You".

  Hooley's serves what is supposed to be Irish food (calimari? shrimp quesodillas? Irish?). I had a Hooley's Egg (hard boiled egg coated in sausage meat and then deep fried) and Bangers and Mash (sausages). Delia had their fish and chips, with three pieces of fish so large it was difficult to finish them. Cathy treated herself to a sixteen ounce piece of New York cut steak from an animal supposed to be just two years old.

  As midnight came and went, some of Cathy's friends had to bail. They wanted to know what their share of the tab was, and Hooley's doesn't issue individual checks. The whole table was on one bill, so Delia and Anita got a preliminary copy of it and started working with the early departees to get them taken care of. Cathy's friend Wendy took care of the real bill.

  Then the jinx hit. Everybody had settled up, and Wendy was holding about $100 less than the amount shown on the bill. After several conferences with Jason, the waiter, Cathy and Wendy moved to the office to try to figure out what was wrong, Cathy taking my PDA with her for its calculator capabilities. Delia and Anita eventually joined them, as did several of Cathy's other friends. Anita returned to explain the problem to me.

  Each bill had been brought in a plastic folder, the type all restaurants use. One of the black plastic folders was still sitting on the table. I picked it up. It was full of money. I brought it in to Cathy in the office area and presented it to her without a word. She almost cried with relief when she saw what was inside. The amount exactly matched what they were missing -- I don't know how much that was.

  Cathy had come with us but wanted to hang out with her buddies for a while, so us old folks (Delia, Anita, Don and I) headed home by ourselves. We drove right into a traffic stop run, strangely, by the Sheriff's Office; they don't normally do traffic. I had to produce my driver's license and answer concerning the drinking I had been doing, which had amounted to two beers, the last one about three hours before we were stopped. When we got home, I called Cathy to warn her.

  Her response was, "Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that. I heard about it earlier."

  Everybody did arrive home safely -- eventually.

  • 02:43
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