Shamming/Sharing

Want to know what it's about? See the Shamming/Sharing intro post.

Sorry for the time gap with the sham/shares. I got a little bit tipply last night whilst watching Matrix:Reloaded and Second Hand Lions. Both were good movies. I don't see what everybody was bitching about with Matrix2 there. It's an action movie, y'all. Don't be looking for a Tom Clancy plot in a Keenu vehicle. Anyway, I'm not tipply tonight but I am big time sleepy. I didn't want to put y'all off for another day but I was going to anyway until I thought of a great short anecdote and a great way to sham it. A short check with my pseudo-random number generator to find out which version to record for posterity and here it is for your guessing pleasure.

Is this anecdote a sham or a share?

In my crazy youth I worked at Wegman's grocery store. Just about all of the people I hung out with (and/or moved in with) also worked there. Thursday's were paydays so every Thursday we'd all go down to a local bar/restaurant to drink pitchers of beer and throw darts. And eat chicken wings - this was Buffalo, after all. This particular establishment was our place of choice because the Weggie's crew had established itself there and they didn't bother to card anybody in the group. I and my underage coworkers appreciated and exploited this trust.

Anyway, my step-mom had been on me for a while about drinking too much and basically challenged me to go a night with the crew without drinking anything. She did it in an obvious and pathetic reverse psychological way (You couldn't go out with those people a single time without drinking!) but I was ornery enough to want to prove her wrong anyway. I might have just needed to prove that to myself as well.

I had my teetotaler evening with my pitcher of Coke sticking out like a lone sentinel in a forest of amber beers. I was the first out when we broke for the evening since I didn't have to pony up for the tab (non-alcoholic beverages were free - designated driver program or some such). As I pulled out of the parking lot I noticed a car pull after me from a parking lot on the other side of the street. Yup, coppers. They followed me for about a quarter mile until I'd turned onto the Boulevard (the first big thoroughfare from the bar). They seemed a bit pissed when I told them I'd had only soda to drink and they quickly realized I wasn't bullshitting.

Fortunately for a couple of my friends it was only the one cruiser working that bar. The ones who might have had a problem with the police were spared due to my red herring.