When My Cousin and I Got Tossed Out of All-You-Can-Eat Crab Leg Night at Red Lobster
And how it helped heal my grieving Aunt Connie
Truth be told, Manny and I got tossed out of a number of places over the years. Mostly bars, honky tonks, and jook joints, and it was mostly Manny’s fault.
Once, when I was maybe 30 years old, I was sitting at the bar of a run-down music venue during a mid-week open mic night. The dark, smelly building was in a small town in South Carolina with a small town sensibility and clientele. It was as fun and awful as you imagine.
I was busy flirting with a woman beside me at the bar when Manny came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. Manny was a handsome young man who retained a lot of his loose-limbed charm even though he had put on quite a few pounds. The way his blonde hair fell over his sparkling eyes enabled him to get out of a few tight spots. His sly grin and quick humor helped smooth over a lot of problems.
Not this time.
I looked back at him and saw that he was uncharacteristically tense. All of his body language said that something had gone badly wrong while I was sitting at the bar — minding my own business.
“We have to go,” he said and started heading for the door.
