The Stranger I Met Today

“So, what’s everyone up to tonight?” I asked the crowded, yet quiet elevator. 

“You know, just having fun,” one guy replied.

“Yeah, us too,” I said motioning to our group.  There were eight of us in Atlantic City, celebrating a friend’s upcoming nuptials.  Four twenty-something fellas had joined us on the twenty-ninth floor.  I may have mentioned this before, but silence in groups makes me tremble with lunacy inside.  I start forming, and eventually tossing out, questions to the group to spark conversation.  I simply can’t help myself, even in an sixteen second elevator ride. 

When I was in grad school, I took a challenging communications class with a tough professor.  Most of the students often looked down to the ground in unison during the discussion portion of the class.  I never wanted to dominate the discussion, but when the professor asked questions and sat silently waiting for an answer, I could only squirm for so long before blurting out a response.  Like Roger Rabbit during a Shave & a Haircut test, I would always succumb. 

“So, what’s the drink of choice tonight?  What’s in the bottle?”

“Dude,” the guy closest to the door seam said.  He cradled a bottle in one arm. 

“I’m nosy.  I can’t help it.”  A few girls from the bachelorette group feigned disbelief.  I chuckled and asked again. 

“Dude.”

The only sound was the whirring of the elevator descent. 

“Nah girlie,” the man said playfully.  “I’m not calling you dude, it’s called Dude. It’s what the kids drink.  My little brother wanted it for tonight.  It’s like Mountain Dew vodka.  ”

Our Abbott and Costello skit ended there.  The man in the elevator held the bottle up for me and the other girls to see.  The yellow liquid had a hint of green.  The drink was the color of a not quite-ripe banana and really was contained in a bottle that had the word DUDE written across the front.

Lesson Learned

I’m too old to know what the kids drink.  I guess I’m somewhere between dude and an old-fashioned.