Jim Goldsworthy, Columnist
A lady who works in my favorite doughnut shop read last week’s discussion of Idiot Sightings and told me she particularly appreciated the one about the fast-food patron who confused a clerk by giving her $5.25 to pay a $4.25 bill — the idea being that she would get back an even $1 in change.
The doughnut lady is old enough and smart enough to have learned how to make change without benefit of a computerized cash register and said she has run into similar difficulties with clerks who are incapable of making change without electronic help.
As to the aforementioned Idiot Sighting, the patron tried to explain to the clerk why she gave her exactly a dollar more than the amount of the bill. The clerk consulted with her manager, who said they couldn’t do such a transaction. The clerk returned and gave the patron a dollar bill and 75 cents in change.
My conversation with the doughnut lady reminded me of something that happened years ago at The Famous North End Tavern.
The price of a 12-ounce mug of draft beer had just gone from 50 cents to 55 cents (which should give you an idea of how long ago this took place).
One night I went in, sat down at the bar, asked the beermaiden for one of my usual and put down a dollar bill on the counter.
“Give me a dime,” she said.
Why, I asked, should I give her a dime?
“A draft is 55 cents,” she said. “You’re obviously going to have another one, aren’t you? (Obviously, I was.) Fifty-five times two is 110. Give me $1.10, and that will cover two beers.”
It made perfect sense to me — just as it did to all of the other guys who were there. Truth is, her physical attributes alone would have led us to believe that damn near anything she said made perfect sense.
And so, that’s how it went all evening long. Every time one of us forked over a dollar for a beer, he laid a dime down beside it and got 55 cents in change. Just enough for a refill.
All seemed to be right with the world.
The next time I went to The Famous North End Tavern, it was the beermaiden’s night off. The proprietor himself was working.
Without my even having to ask him — we had a long and mutually beneficial professional relationship and remain friends to this day — he went to the cooler, got out a frosted mug, filled it with my beer of choice and put it down in front of me.
I got into my pockets and set down a dollar and a dime.
“What’s the dime for?” he asked me.
I repeated the beermaiden’s explanation about giving her $1.10 for two beers.
“Tell you what,” he said. “You just hang onto the dime for a while. Give me the dollar and I’ll give you a beer and 45 cents in change. Then, when you get a second beer, give me back the 45 cents and add the dime to it.”
He must have seen the “IDIOT” light come on in my eyes, because he just stood there and laughed at me.
“Don’t feel bad,” said one of my buddies, who was sitting on the barstool next to mine. “She got me, too.”
Last I heard of her, the beermaiden was planning to go to law school.
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Now and then, one of my friends e-mails me a selection of anecdotes called “That’s when the fight started.” They would include:
• I asked my wife where she wanted to go for our anniversary. She said, “Somewhere I haven’t been in a long time.” I said, “OK, how about the kitchen?” That’s when the fight started.
• My wife sat down on the couch next to me as I was flipping channels. She asked, “What’s on the TV?” I said, “Dust.” That’s when the fight started.
• I took my wife to a restaurant, and the waiter, for some reason, took my order first. I told him I’d have a steak, rare. He said, “What about the mad cow?” I told him, “She can order for herself.” That’s when the fight started. ... and
• My wife asked me if the dress she had on made her butt look big. I told her, “Not as much as the dress you wore yesterday.” That’s when the fight started.
With this in mind, one of the things that — at least in my eyes — makes America great is our collective ability to temporarily set aside inconveniences like terrorism, recession, mass unemployment, bankruptcy, nuclear proliferation, disease epidemics, political corruption and the like in order to devote our attention to such things as whether or not Donald Trump would allow Miss California USA to keep her crown in spite of her association with a group that opposes same-sex marriage and the fact that she modeled underwear for a photographer when she was a teen-ager.
Admit it. Some of you wanted to hear him tell her, “You’re fired!” And yes, I did look up some of the photos on the Internet. There are far more provocative images in TV commercials.
I was in The Famous North End Tavern one night when a beauty contest of some kind was on TV. (Call it a scholarship pageant, if you like. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.) Most of the men were at the TV end of the bar, and most of the women weren’t.
One of those women was unmarried, unattached, had a reputation for directing verbal belligerency toward men and — we men generally agreed — was constructed along the same lines as a foot locker with feet.
She commented rather loudly that, “Isn’t it just like them to sit there, hypnotized by a parade of women in skimpy bathing suits?”
“Hey,” one fellow hollered over his shoulder, “ain’t nothin’ in here worth lookin’ at!”
That’s when the fight started.
