OKay... if the video thing doesn't work...

(The video worked, but I apologize for the crap resolution. Squishy is the one waving at the camera--you can hear Zoomboy in the background going, "Squishy waved at me!" and Dad saying, "Yeah, now stop waving at her and let her dance!" or something close:-)

So while you watch that, I'll entertain you with the story of Ma and Pa Kettle go clubbing.

Okay-- I've made it abundantly clear that I am large. Not healthy large. Mama-is-a-Volkswagen large. And while I'm always on a quest to NOT be a Volkswagen, and have developed some habits that I hope may reduce me to, say, the size of a Mini-Cooper, I am not necessarily all excited about putting on my hot baby clothes and going clubbing.

But Mate took me anyway.

Mate's friends--who, aside from being AWESOME, are also YOUNG and PRETTY-- were celebrating the birthday of one of their own--a very sweet guy named Mike, who rented out the corner of this, like, premiere nightclub in Sacramento.

Mate was going to go alone. I made the little pouty face, and he said, "Well, you could COME!" but I didn't quite grasp the entire situation. The situation was, that I was going to be ten years older and a gazunga sizes bigger than everybody FOR A TWO BLOCK RADIUS!

I put on my sausage shirt (so called because it has an inner layer of tight webbing that acts as shrinkwrap to make me seem slightly less like a Volkswagen and more like a Mini-Cooper) and my fancy black pedal pushers and made up my face and we got our club on! (Okay-- we stopped to see Inception first--which I loved, mostly because it was an allegory for the group creative process and I go for that sort of shit.)

We got to where we were going, and I felt... well... let us just say, supremely out of my element. I was not big on clubbing when I was a size nine. (Back in the dark ages. Before dirt and dinosaurs. Mate as my witness--I SWEAR!) But two things happened to make me feel better about the whole thing.

A. Mate's friends arrived, and for some reason they love me, and I adore them, and when two guys were talking about running from the bulls at Pamplona I looked at the one guy's girlfriend (who was so uberhot and adorable that I might have fallen for her if I swung that way whatsoever) and said, "You know, I think girls have enough of things poking them around the ass. We just don't see the charm of getting on the street and doing it with a bunch of guys when death is involved." The fact that they laughed at that joke just confirmed that Mate's friends from work are TRULY his friends, and infinitely cooler than most of my friends from work. (Emphasis on MOST, but still!)

B. The only reason I had the courage to crack that joke and then dance with that big group of people was that Mate got me ROARING FUCKING DRUNK.

Now, I don't really get drunk a lot. There are a couple of reasons for this, some of which you know.

1. I'm weird enough already.
2. I don't like being out of control of my weirdness... it may take over a large corporation and I'm not ready for that sort of responsibility.
3. (And the most important one!) I always seem to get drunk in front of THE most unfortunate of people.

To witness? The time I went to a friend's house for a party (Mate drove) and came home three sheets to the wind. My grandmother was babysitting. I can barely remember the conversation I had with her when we got home, but I'm hoping she's gotten old enough to completely forget it. And that was MILD. Most of the time, (like the 7-10 times I've ever been intoxicated since I've started teaching!) I either run into students or run into a teacher who will report me to students. And man, that's just embarrassing. About ten years ago, right after Senior Project (which I was running at the time and had just built from the ground up at great cost to my health, sanity, and some relationships with my colleagues that it took me a while to repair) I went to a bar with my co-project coordinator and got shitfaced in the extreme. Falling off my stool drunk--so drunk, that I found myself staring earnestly into the eyes of a student who had come into the restaurant and saying, "I neber get sdrunk. Snever. Shwear. Thish ish shoooo out of chracterat for me. Swhear." Or something to that effect. And why, you might ask yourself, was a student in that bar/restaurant in the first place?

Oh yeah-- because half the senior class worked there that year, and it was payday. And yes. They ALL came in for their check.

But you know, I thought I was safe. I mean, I put on the sausage shirt, got the courage to go into that club where everyone was a size six (or smaller) and smiled nicely at the security guys with the ear pieces, who were nicer than nice to me, and smiled sweetly when I needed directions to the bathroom, to get by the drunk patrons in the way of the bathroom, or to get me another drink. I mean, it looked like the drinking gods were smiling on me, right? (Someone was--after about eight vodka and cranberries, *I* was certainly all smiles!)

So the party ended, and Mate guided me happily down the street, and there we were, standing at a crosswalk on the way to our car, when one of the bouncers from the club on THAT corner says, "Ms. Lane?"

I turn around blearily.

"Josh?"

"Yeah! You remember me? You taught me Sophomore English!"

"Omigod, Josh! I still have that picture you drew for me--the one that said "Wingnut!"

"That's awesome--I remember you. You were great!"

We talked for the few seconds it took for the light to go, and then I got a hug, and the whole time I'm thinking, "Really? REALLY? WHAT ARE THE FUCKING ODDS?"

And then, to make matters weirder?

Apparently the time limit expired for fat chicks walking downtown unmolested, because someone actually MOOED at me as we got to our car. I giggled for the next ten minutes, and when Mate found his way to the freeway, he asked me what was so funny.

"Someone mooed at me!" I told him, and he was not pleased. I was.

"But seriously! It's two in the morning in the clubbing section of town. If these losers are MOOING at the fat chicks, odds are good I had a better night than they did!"

And I'm still convinced that's true!