Act your age, not your shoe size, girl.

Last week while I was working, I had to perform what I like to call, a hand check.  Basically, what that means, is that I saw two drunk guys getting hot and heavy at the bar, and I couldn’t see where their hands were, but I had a fairly certain guess.  So, me being the subtle and extremely kind bartender that I am, I yell out in my very butch voice “Hand check!”  And for some reason, every time I do this, the guys know exactly what I’m talking about, and everyone involved (yes, sometimes I have to perform a hand check on a group of inebriated homosexuals) lifts their hands up and backs away from the nether regions.  At least until I turn my back on them, and then it’s back to sticking it wherever they deem necessary.  Which can I just say, nasty?  I mean seriously, I’ve had guys stick their finger up some dudes bum, and then try to shake my hand.  Seriously.

Often times I have a customer who gets angry at me for telling him to stop pulling people’s dicks out, or they throw a tantrum when I tell them to get off the table, or they pout when I tell them to stop throwing ice cubes at people walking by on the street (if I’m not allowed to do it anymore, neither are you).  To which I usually respond “listen assclown, I’m not your fucking babysitter, you’re a grown ass man, quitting acting like a child.”  But the longer I work at a bar, the more I’m beginning to realize that I might be wrong.

            I’m starting to think that the bars are just a grown up version of recess.  The bartenders are just the teachers looking after the kids, and the police are the principals who send you to detention after school.

When I was a child (and that wasn’t too long ago), we played games during recess—tag, tetherball, chicken.  We’d play on the play structures, we’d swing, or in my case, I’d sit with the girls and hope I didn’t get asked to play basketball because I never understood how the game worked and the ball was about as big as me, so there was no way I was ever going to make a shot.  Sometimes I’d hunt for four-leaf clovers in the forest area behind my playground, and in retrospect that probably wasn’t the best place to let children go unsupervised.  Can we say stranger danger? 

But I digress.

Now that we wear big boy pants (ok, let’s be honest, I own some girl jeans, but they’re the only ones that I can find that fit, don’t judge me asshole) and have hair on our balls, we play grown-up games.  Instead of tag, we tag each other on Facebook.  Instead of stalking your crush across the playground, we stalk each other via Foursquare and Twitter. And playing chicken is what we call flirting.  Our play structures have been replaced with bars that have pool tables and dart boards, and the horribly wonderful high you get from too much candy and swinging until you’re sick has been replaced with shots of Patron. 

I don’t know about anyone else, but I had a horrible time in school.  I don’t understand the desire to go back to that time.  Everyone was so cruel, and thoughtless, and everything we worried about was really quite innocuous.  So why is it, that whenever we drink, we revert back to the less evolved version of ourselves?  We say some pretty awful things, and we do even worse.  And after we pass out, our not-so-restful slumber is quickly followed by regret and awkward apologies.

Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.  I mean, it’s one thing for me to stand behind the bar, relatively sober (in comparison to all you other bitches), and judge your immaturity, but it’s an entirely different animal when I’m not working.  After all, I’ve been there—we’ve all done some stupid shit. 

And while I might have learned the basics of basketball, as soon as I get asked to play a game with the cool kids, I still get shy and uncomfortable and go sit with my girls.  I always have an excellent excuse ready, just so that I don’t have to get naked in the locker room.  And I still hang out with people much older than me, because I get uncomfortable by people my own age—heaven forbid I try to relate to one of my peers. 

Maybe my desire to overcome my youth is so strong, that I overcompensate, and act like the one who has his shit together, when really all I’m doing is stumbling along through life, barely holding on to my sanity, just like everyone else.  And maybe most everyone else is so afraid of losing their youth, that they forget how wonderful it is to be an adult. 

And maybe we all need to remember that age and maturity don’t run parallel with each other.

And seriously, put your dicks away at the bar.  It’s weird.  Save that for the bathroom, or the car, or the bathhouse.

Or, even better, your bedroom.

Lord, I need a drink.

Jesse.