One Crazy Night Pt. 2: The Hyper-Quadruplets

When last we left our intrepid quartet, they had missed out on the early showing of Night at the Museum in order for Shack-Fu to rescue a damsel in distress.
Following our brief brush with danger, the four of us decided we would while away our time at On the Border until the late showing of the film, a decision that was probably regretted by pretty much the majority of the people who chose to dine there that night. Know how I talked about PigPen and Shack-Fu feeding off of each other's energy? Well, apparently when you add Peanut, myself, and the after-effects of adrenaline rushes, then that energy spreads and multiplies exponentially within the group.

It was a beautiful and frightening thing.

As soon as our waitress reached the table, my more gregarious tablemates began chatting her up, which somehow lead to Shack-Fu commenting on the large number of straws she was carrying at her side. She confessed that they were actually straws she had stolen from a neighboring restaurant, since On the Border doesn't order pre-wrapped straws, but instead has a box filled with naked straws they place in the drinks before bringing them out; she pilfered the wrapped straws because she hated carrying out unwrapped straws in her hands if the customers wanted extras.

"But, don't you have to touch them to put them in the drinks back there anyway?" PigPen inquired, to which she said yes, but since they don't see it they don't think about it. This sent our group on a rant about from now on when we ate there we would refuse to drink from pre-placed straws, instead asking for them to bring out the box for us to select our own, or possibly just wandering into the back to do it ourselves. When we finally got done giving her a hard time long enough to order, PigPen and Peanut both ordered margaritas.* Shack-Fu, still in his military togs, told her "Since I'm in uniform, I won't be drinking any alcohol -- of course, I don't drink alcohol anyway." Somehow, Peanut misheard Shack-Fu's statement and asked "Wait, did you just say, 'Since I'm beautiful'?" Our waitress jumped in: "Oh, yeah, he just said that beautiful people don't drink," a comment which elicited great cries of consternation from our margarita-ordering pals, who gave her a hard time the rest of the evening about calling them ugly.

This kind of set the tone for the rest of the evening.

I've been struggling with the best way to convey our experience effectively; in many ways it was your quintessential "you just had to be there" evening, where things that probably weren't all that funny were suddenly magnified into the most hilarious things we'd ever heard due to our general mind-set. In fact, I can guarantee that most of you blog monkeys won't get even a fraction of the amusement reading about these as we did experiencing them. Still, I have to record these for posterity, I suppose. Some of the more memorable moments of madcap merriment include:

• I got caught in another of those "You don't know what movie that's from? I thought you knew everything about movies!" discussions that I love so much. PigPen used this as an opportunity to tell the other two about how surprised he had been that I had never seen Robin Hood: Men in Tights, although his message was muddled a bit by his decision to only reference the sub-title, thus making him utter the phrase "I showed Todd men in tights," a phrase which puzzled Shack-Fu, who had visions of PigPen making me look at pictures of men in tights, which then transformed into visions of high-school grappler PigPen in an orange wrestling outfit, an image which would pop into Shack-Fu's head periodically throughout the rest of the evening to the amusement and horror of all.
  
  
• Discussion of the wreck prompted Peanut to relate a story about how he once drove his car into a ditch and had to be rescued by an incredibly hot woman in a pick-up. While helping him out, she happened to mention where she worked; Peanut thought about trying to contact her there, but never followed through. Shack-Fu suggested that Peanut had missed a perfect opportunity to grab her attention by sending her, not flowers, but a Tonka truck, an idea that sparked another of those HyperTwin moments where Shack-Fu and PigPen brains synch up, as PigPen cried out that he could have hooked a toy car to it too, and they then rattled off several suggestions for what he could have written on the card: "Hooked on you," "Chains of love," etc.
  
  
• [anecdote deleted concurrent with Section IV Article 9 Subsection 3 Paragraph 14d of the Guy Code, better known as the “What Happens at On the Border, Stays at On the Border” clause]
  
  
• PigPen was telling Shack-Fu about the origin of the Elmer Fudd nickname, ending the story with "And after I said 'Okay, Elmer Fudd,' he just gave me the 'Todd look**'." PigPen then fixed his face into a scowl, prompting Shack-Fu to exclaim "Ooo, yeah, I think I've got that down too!" before making his own attempt. So, yeah, they're doing mocking impressions of me now. Awesome.
  
  
• When PigPen was contemplating a second margarita, Shack-Fu whispered to the waitress that she should just bring out some lemonade instead; she responded that sometimes they have to do that with her grandmother, which struck me as freaking hilarious at the time, sending me into paroxysms of wheezing laughter, while Shack-Fu kept elbowing me saying “It’s not funny,” but it was too late; I had been consumed with mindless laughter, and there was no return.
  
  
• Every time the staff members would walk by our table (we were seated close to the kitchen) whooping and hollering for a birthday celebration, we would join in.*** At one point, a pretty large group engaged us in a minor birthday noisemaking battle; they may have had numbers on their side, but we were fueled by near-psychotic levels of hilarity. This led to a joking discussion by Shack-Fu about whose birthday we should say it was. Well, partially joking, for as soon as Shack-Fu went to the rest room, PigPen grabbed a waitress and told her "Hey, the guy who just left? It's his birthday today. His name is Shack-Fu, and he's 25." So, a few minutes after Shack-Fu returned to the table, the staff members came streaming out of the kitchen in full birthday mode, and we all joined in again; it took Shack-Fu a second to realize that instead of marching on past, the parade had stopped and encircled our table. How I wish we'd had a video-camera to capture the gradual realization settle on his face. But the best part was when our waitress (who definitely earned her tip that night) announced "Attention everybody! Tonight we have Shack-Fu here, and he's celebrating his twelfth birthday!"
  
  
• I honestly can't remember what I was trying to do or say when it happened; all I know is that I knocked over my glass of Coke, and am now doomed to be mocked for it until the end of time.
  
  
• As we finally left the restaurant, we passed by the group which had engaged us in noisy birthday battle; several of them waved, said goodbye, and the like. One of them was giving us the "Rock on!" hand signal, so Shack-Fu decided to respond with a peace sign -- only instead of holding up two fingers, he held up three. Realizing his error, he then tried to oh-so-suavely cover it up by morphing it into other signs, so I shoved him towards the door before he accidentally flashed a rival gang sign and got us all shot.

Again, that hardly does our time there justice, and I know there’s tons of stuff I’ve left out; maybe if you picture lots of people sitting at the surrounding tables giving us the “Are they all wasted or something?” looks, it will help set the scene better.

Surprisingly enough, when we finally did make it to the movie theater, we somehow managed not to cause a huge disturbance and get kicked out; I think we were all starting to crash a bit by that point. Sure, there was some tomfoolery going in (tormenting the cashiers at the ticket booth) and coming out (much tripping, pushing, and general testosterone fueled horseplay), but for the most part we were good little boys while the movie was playing.

After we got back home, I grabbed my notebook to make notes about the evening for the blog, while PigPen immediately went to work on his own (much less over-blown) account of the night’s adventures.

What started out as simple trip to the movies wound up being a night filled with danger, excitement, inside jokes, manic laughter, and enough ammunition on each other to choke a camel.

All in all, a good night.


*Thus dispelling the myth that Baptists only drink when there are no other Baptists around
**Pretty sure I got that look on my face as soon as he said that.
***Well, except for the first time they moved away from us instead of by us, when Peanut went "Woooooooo!" and the rest of us didn't -- think he called us a few choice names then.