Hooter hell

Last weekend, a trip to the Humble Hooters (with the exception of the MMA crowd) was delightful. What a difference a week can make.

Now, the quality of the personnel – at least lookswise – was just as good, if not better. The girl who took care of us first, Mikaela (or something like that) had a nametag that mentioned that she was a “promotional girl.”

Yes, she was. Sadly, she didn’t get to serve us the entire time, which started our descent into Hooter hell.

We got a new waitress and, our party of eight (me, Momma Pug, Madge, the Razorback, Madgette, their exchange student from Korea, Debbie Do Right and Mr. “Thank God I’m not in Mississippi and Near My Wife’s Family”) suddenly became invisible. If you had added Matthew Fox and that hot brunette chick, thrown in some dirt (and maybe a volleyball) and you had yourself a show on ABC. I mean, we were lost. Abandoned. Totally forgotten about.

Not for five minutes or 15 or even 30. A full friggin’ hour. With this bunch, idle time is not folly; it should come with an Attorney General’s warning.

Since there were hotties around and baseball on TV, I figured I’d be largely calm with the exception of the fact that I was really Fing hungry and it doesn’t take that long to make miniburgers and wings. So I watched TV and toosh for a few minutes, until I heard the sound sort of like someone had spit a dart.

Well, it wasn’t a dart. But there was spit. It was a spitball. I was not entirely shocked to see who the spitballer was:

My beloved bride.

Never one to be bored and certainly never one to act over the age of seven when around her friends from Franklin County, Momma Pug decided to kill some time by firing soaked pieces of napkin through her straw at Madgette. This little five-year-old has the look of the righteously indignant (picture your grandmother’s look when she heard you say “Motherfucker” for the first time and you’re there) down to a science. She was AGHAST that her auntie had fired a spitball at her. Until the second one hit her in the face.

Within a matter of moments, the majority of the table, with the exception of the Korean Exchange Student, Debbie Do Right and Mr. TGINIMANMWF, were throwing spitballs, packets of sugar, ice and whatever else they could across the table. I will admit to throwing one, at Madgette, who retaliated by wadding up her entire coloring paper and throwing it at me as I was watching the ballgame on TV in front of me.

It went four feet over my head and landed in the middle of a table of people still eating.

“Strike,” said the Korean Exchange Student, who I had been trying to teach the intricacies of baseball to.

Not quite.

I walked over, apologized for the inconvenience and told them that her parents were sitting at the other side of the table. They left shortly thereafter, wearing the same AGHAST look on their face that Madgette had when Momma Pug drilled her the first time.

So it is now established that the spitball stuff is not such a good idea. Does that stop my wife? Nope. Instead, she doubles up, trying to shove two spitballs into her straw to fire them at a five-year-old child. What happens next is predictable: her straw blows up and spit, water and paper go flying onto the shirt of Debbie Do Right, who likes anything having to do with germs about as much as Amy Winehouse likes sobriety – which is to say, not much.

DDR has had a rough day and, it would suffice to say, is unamused by this development. She’s even less amused when my wife puts a lemon slice in her mouth and smiles all wide at her. So DDR pops her in the check, allowing my missus to truly suck on a lemon.

What do I do now? My wife has just been bopped in the face by a friend of two decades, who is AGHAST at her behavior. So I choose to do nothing, because really, she deserved it. And maybe it’ll calm down the screwball show that our table has become, because I’ve noticed that the only person NOT staring at us in the place is our invisible waitress. And, shockingly, most people were AGHAST.

At this point, I look up and see that the baseball game has been taken off, replaced with the Olympics. But not a good Olympic event; the men’s floor routine. In other words, severely precious-looking dudes in sleeveless shirts and short shorts running around like divas.

“What the hell is this shit?” I sputtered, talking faster and faster as I went. “Bad enough I aint got no food, now I can’t even watch a ballgame because we gotta watch these fairies prance around looking like they missed fuggin leather week. Whothafug watches this shit?”

Madge leans over to the Korean Exchange Student and informs her that she should not listen the naughty words coming out of my mouth.

Thankfully, I don’t think she understood a single one of them. But I looked at the rest of the table, and everyone else was AGHAST. Even my wife, who still had lemon juice dribbling down her chin.

Dinner eventually came. Cold. We were highly pissed. Someone shot a spitball at the waitress as we left, but I’m not sure who. I’ve got my money on Debbie Do Right.