Old Enough to Be Your Mother

Saturday night I went out for drinks with my girlfriend after oh I don’t know about eight hundred and fifty years. I honestly can’t remember the last time I went out for girls’ night in LA. Clearly, it’s been too long. So I was quite excited by the prospect of it.

We went to Father’s Office in Culver City first, enjoying a beer and some sweet potato fries. Then it was off to Saints & Sinners, a charming retro little spot with 60s décor, a bizarre vintage horror flick being projected on the wall, and bartenders who dimmed the lights and blew fire and one another a couple times while we were there.

As my girlfriend and I discussed the latest film her company has been working on, a young chap in a too-big trucker cap that covered his ears interrupted us with a drunken salutation. He introduced himself as Richard, so I of course said, “Richie, how old are you?” Twenty-three. Practically a newborn.

“I’m old enough to be your mother,” I told him.

My girlfriend laughed and asked if that would have been physically possible. Considering I didn’t hit puberty until about 25, the answer to that was no.

“You don’t seem 33, but you do seem tense,” Richard slurred back at me. “You need to laugh more! You need to learn to have fun.”

“Oh, I know how to have fun,” I corrected him. “You should see the rugburns on my back.”

And those, mom if you’re reading this, are only there because I slipped on a banana peel in Tampa and scraped my back on the carpet when I fell down.