The Napkin

Yesterday, Jose turned 27. It's not a particularly important age, just one more bump in the road until the big three-oh, when every event in your life is painstakingly scrutinized and it is determined whether or not you've done anything worthwhile in your life. Won't that be fun? But that's still a few years off, so today, let's take a look back to the last so-called meaningful birthday, the 21st.

As depressing as it may be, 1999 was six years ago. Jose was coming off a somewhat nasty breakup with his girlfriend. Part, if not all, of which had to do with her tendency to find reasons to be jealous. Not only did she get mad when he so much as looked at another girl, she was even jealous of the Britney Spears and Shania Twain CDs he had in his car. He also had a Lionel Richie CD in there, but I don't know how she felt about that. He didn't do much to help the situation. When asked if he thought Shania was more attractive then her, he said something along the lines of "Of course!" I don't know what kind of answer she thought she was going to get, but he probably could have been a little more tactful in his response.

On Valentine's Day, I got a call from him to see if I wanted to go to Hooters. She heard him talking to someone over the phone and immediately thought it was a girl. And that was the last straw. Instead of telling her it was only me, he told her it was in fact a girl. Not just any girl, but the one he ran into at college a few weeks earlier that had gone to high school with us. I think he might have taken her out for a friendly lunch once and never saw her again, but for some reason he told his girlfriend that's who was on the other end of the phone. I guess he'd just had enough. I could hear her yelling and cursing in the background. And that was pretty much the end of their relationship.

A little over a month later, he was still depressed about the whole thing. We went to Uno's for his birthday, albeit a few weeks late. Our waitress, Kim, I think, was very friendly and attractive, a refreshing change of pace from the angry rat-faced woman at Bickford's. Jose ordered his first official alcoholic beverage as an adult, a Corona. When she checked his ID, she noticed that he had just turned 21.

"Oh, you're a Pisces. Cool. So am I."

Well, that cheered him right up.

When she brought our drinks over, she placed his Corona in front of him and said "Here you go, darling." And although it's not how I remember it, Jose maintains that she then swiveled around to me and growled "Here." as she slammed my root beer down. In any case, she definitely was a bit more sympathetic to her fellow Pisces.

The entire ride home, all Jose talked about was the waitress. He was positive that they had some kind of connection and he wouldn't stop gloating about how she was flirting with him. It got kind of annoying, so I thought I'd have a little fun with it.

The following night, I went back to Uno's with my family. I invited them to go, but really the only reason I was there was to get an Uno's napkin. April Fool's Day was just around the corner and I had a deliciously eeeevil idea to get back at Jose for all his gloating. The next time I saw him, I told him the following story:

"I went back to Uno's the other night with my family and saw your waitress. She was at another table, but she came over and asked where my friend was. I told her you were working. So she pulls out a pen starts writing on my napkin. 'Here. Tell him call me,' she says. Then she walked away. Can you believe that? Like I'm your messenger boy or something."

I gave him the napkin, which read "Call me," followed by the number and her name. He started laughing at me and saying "I told you! I told you!" It was almost too easy. He was a little suspicious, though. Enough that he wasn't sure if he should call her, but not enough to prevent him from bragging to his ex-girlfriend that another woman gave him her phone number. Even though they had broken up, and she was already dating someone else, she didn't take it well.

For days he was hesitant to call, but he knew that if it was real, his window of opportunities was closing fast. So he finally picked up the phone. A short time later, I got a call from him that went something like ""I'll get you. I'll get your mother. I'll get your family."

The number, written by my mom to give it that feminine look, was Wah-Kee's. Or rather, Wah-Kee's old number. We didn't see him as often in those days, so I didn't know that his family had moved. Some random person answered the phone, which didn't have quite the same effect as say, if Kee's Chinese-speaking mother had answered, but it was still funny. I thought so, anyway. Jose had a slightly different take on it.

Meanwhile, his ex-girlfriend was apparently still reeling from seeing the napkin. When a Shania Twain song came on the car stereo, she became even more frustrated and bent down to change the station. At that point, the car skidded off the road and crashed. She wasn't seriously hurt, but Jose insisted the accident was my fault. Logic be damned! Even though he was the one who showed the napkin to his jealousy prone ex, I was clearly to blame. It's not like I told him to show it to her. And what if the waitress really did give him her number? Would it still be my fault that he shoved it in his ex's face?

Later, he told me that he planned on getting back at me by having a male stripper dressed as a clown come to my house on my birthday, but wisely decided against it.

Anyway, happy birthday, buddy. And if it makes you feel any better, I wrecked my arm last night in the stupidest way possible. Brianna was swinging her arm around and asked me if I could do it. I thought, "What a silly question." Of course I could, at least I could before (I finally get to say this) my old football injury started acting up. As soon as my arm went over my head, I heard a loud pop, then an even louder crack, and it felt like my arm fell off at the shoulder. Didn't see that one coming. It's twelve hours later and I can still barely lift it.