Fill The Blank

I’ve been living in my town for about 15 years.  When I was just hitting the double digits in age a new store appeared to be opening up in the small strip of shops behind my house.  After making a candy-run one summer day I peered inside and deemed it a restaurant.  However, I didn’t exactly know what a bar was like or about, causing me to mislabel it.

Tonight, on the eve of what is a very important day for me professionally, my friend decides he wants to drink. Where?  How about that local bar behind your house that has wings and stuff? Sure.

This isn’t the first local bar I’ve been to, there’s another one a few minutes away by car I frequented when my childhood friend became the main bartender there.  Local bars always seemed like gritty, vapid, real-life examples of “misery loves company.” After going to this bar though, I can honestly say that isn’t always the case.  Bar-behind-my-house had around 8 occupants, and it looked like it could easily hold 5 times that on a busy night.  Flat screen televisions were scattered just below the ceiling along the wooden walls for all to view whatever sporting channel had a game on.  The bartenders and other employees were an assortment of people with different ethnicities and ages, and gave off a similar vibe to the employees you’d find in a mom-and-pop pizza place.  (One of which happens to be down the block.) Other patrons of the bar discussed their work, politics, and stuff every human being goes through to keep themselves afloat in this world.  It wasn’t pathetic, or shady, it was very human.  Also, what I find funny, or even strange, was that the first person I met in this town ended up walking through bar-behind-my-house’s doors.

Can’t put my finger on why, but it was comforting having a quiet area to order wings, drink some beer and have a conversation with my friend about life.  A potential reason may be that the place I work in can seem like a large departure from plain old human nature, and seems unreal at times.  The place I thought would indicate total loss of integrity upon visiting turned out to be a means of legitimately winding down a long work day.

Not exactly a post about achieving new heights in wisdom or character, but something was definitely endearing about the environment that’s been behind my house so long.

Sean