18 and Life To Go

My wife's aunt was having a birthday get-together tonight. We went and ate some dessert. I asked one of her daughters what she bought her mother as a gift. She said, "We gave her that pink skirt that she's wearing right now."

I had to leave because of a prior engagement. When we headed for the door the aunt came to hug us goodbye. I said, "Sorry we didn't bring you a gift."

She said, "Oh, please don't. I don't want you to buy me a gift."

I said, "Well, we did buy you a gift. It's a pink skirt exactly like the one you're wearing so now we have to return it."

She said, "Really?"

I said, "No. That was a joke."

She said, "Oh. Hahahahahahaha. That was funny."

I said, "Yes. Actually, that joke is my gift to you."

She said, "It was really funny."

I said, "Yeah. That's what I get everyone."

Have you ever tried re-gifting a lame joke, suckers? You can't.

I had a prior engagement because, the other night at work, this 18 year old kid came to me with the specific purpose of asking if I would like to come with him and his friends to see a movie this weekend.

When you are 30 there is a small part of you that thinks, "I can't see a movie with you. YOU'RE 18! I have a wife and kids." But this kid has the same schedule as me and managed to suggest seeing a movie at an opportune time in my week. So I ignored the voice that said I was too old to have play-dates like these and I just said, "Sure." How often does anyone invite me to do anything?

I told my wife about it and she laughed and thought it was a silly idea. I told her I planned on going and she thought I was crazy. "18 year olds, Emmett! Don't you remember what it's like to hang out with 18 year olds?" I do, my little sister is 18 and I hung out at Sundance with her. It was fun. Besides, this would put me right in my element to be loud and obnoxious, the way I am.

It was also funny because when the kid asked me to go, he approached me about an hour later and said, "I should probably tell you that one of my friends is kind of an asshole. He's into Heavy Metal and chains and shit."

I laughed and said, "I don't care. There is no shortage of assholes in my life. They're usually at least entertaining."

I met them at the theater. The kid had gone on and on about how excited he was to see the movie "The Pathfinder" and he told me that is what we would be seeing at precisely 9:20 this evening. When we got to the ticket booth we found out that movie isn't even in theaters yet. So we got tickets for "Hannible Rising" instead.

We had to wait an extra 40 minutes for that movie to start so we talked about Heavy Metal. Isn't Megadeth so totally awesome. I told them I thought Megadeth was awesome when I was in high school but that I have since moved on. Wait, wait, wait. "You USED to listen to Megadeth but you DON'T anymore?" It was obvious something was wrong with me.

Megadeth is pretty good... they just bring back cheesy memories.

When the movie started, the guys whipped out a bunch of bags of sunflower seeds and told me they had a tradition of spitting as many shells on the floor as they could by the time the movie ended. And they liked to throw seeds on eachother from the top row of the theater when their friends were walking down the ramp to the exit. Overall, not too annoying. And hey, free seeds.

The movie was pretty good but not as good as Silence of the Lambs. They did a good job of giving the movie a similar feeling though. I wasn't dissappointed.

Tomorrow we're all going out for Slurpees.