In Which Strangers Do Not Appreciate Gary’s Tone

These two tales date back to our Vegas vacation. Bear in mind Gary was feverish at the time, and he does not travel well. I think the reason he and his entire family don’t travel well is that travel is exciting, and the S______s have a high excitement baseline. Waking up at home and making coffee? Perhaps the coffee will boil over or burn or, if this is a new can of coffee, it must be checked for dessicated severed fingers. Imagine waking in the Bellagio and making fevered coffee in a new coffeemaker. The excitement compounds exponentially. Two mouthy strangers called Gary out on his excited tone.

Mouthy Stranger 1: The older man in the airport bar

We were at the airport the requisite two hours early waiting for the flight to Vegas at 6:00. I left Gary at the gate so I could stifle my cough downing Maker’s Mark. After a very long wait, I was almost next in line when Gary burst into the bar.

“Ellen! Ellen! They’re calling our flight to Vegas! Right now! Get out of line!” Then he blew back out of the bar.

“What?” I heard a woman cry as I barreled through the crowd, “The flight’s leaving early?”

“I don’t know!” her husband said.

And yes, a flight was leaving from our gate, but it was a flight to Chicago. No real excitement. I went back to the bar.

“Is the flight really leaving?” the husband asked.

“Nope. It was the Chicago flight.” And then I downed a shot of bourbon and didn’t say anything else to the family and never made eye contact. (Strangers! In Bars! Chatting Me Up!)

Later, the bar family was next to us in line. The husband said to Gary, “So, turned out it wasn’t our flight! You’d be in bad shape if you boarded that Chicago plane! Heh Heh Heh.”

Gary was pleasant. “Yeah! Heh heh.” His later comment: “Good thing for him he was old; I’d have punched him out.”

Mouthy Stranger 2: The younger man on the bus

Vegas is big. When you say, “That hotel is just next door to our hotel,” that may be true, but each hotel is the size of a mall with its own freeway exit. So when we started down the strip to the Venetian, we didn’t fully realize we’d be Bataan Death Marching our way around five giant malls.

Eventually we paid three dollars and hopped on the bus to go one stop . When our stop came up, Gary said with a touch too much drama, “Ellen! Hit the button to stop the bus! They just announced the Venetian! This is our stop! We’ll miss it! Hit the button!”

As I began to say, “Dude, chill,” the guy seated next to me drawled, “Dude, chill. It’s a stop. The hotel will still be there.”

Gary turned away to exit the bus and, I confess, I mouthed, “Thank you” to the bus man because I’d had enough excitement already for one day. Vegas. It’s exciting! Why crank it up?

Epilogue

To be fair, and because Gary insists I add this, he wisely didn’t get on the bus on our return trip and we hustled back to the Bellagio before the bus made it through rush hour traffic. I didn;’ want to get on the bus anyway, because Gary might have seen Mouthy #2 and clocked him or coughed at him, and then there would be real excitement on top of S_____ excitement on top of travel excitement.