The following tale is based on actual events which occurred a number of years ago…

The End of Year/Beginning of Year Weekend was pretty low key as I ushered in 2012. It probably didn’t help that I had been dealing with a pretty bad case of bronchitis. The coughing and hacking kept me from having a very merry Christmas. My medications caused me to enjoy the warmth of my bed well before the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. But New Year’s Day brought me a healthier outlook.

I started feeling better a couple days before 2012 officially began, but Saturday morning was the first time I had woken up with the ability to fully take a deep breath in weeks. I figured that was a good sign. But I still wanted to take it easy.

But New Year’s Day gave me a chance to hang out with Brandon and his family. We broke bread at Panera and then decided to head over to Macado’s for milkshakes. Honestly, the milkshakes weren’t that great. Well, they were milkshakes, so they’re a little hard to mess up, but I had had better in the past.

Once the shakes had been ordered, Brandon and Kara both pointed out that the waitress was flirting with me. I’m not great at picking up on these things. Sure, I realized there was some giggling at the things I said and there had been a significant amount of eye contact happening, but did that constitute flirting? I wasn’t so sure.

And even if the waitress was flirting, would I even be interested?

The evening progressed. Conversations carried on. Over time it was determined that the waitress was a student at Lynchburg College, making her roughly ten years younger than me which, I can deal with that kind of age difference. But her cute giggling became full-on laughter, and her laugh turned out to be loud and obnoxious. Oh, and she might have been a little racist… red flag.

Needless to say, by the end of the night, I felt no compulsion to ask for this girl’s number. I walked away from Macado’s feeling good about my decision to pursue absolutely nothing. The way I saw it, there had to be other waitresses out there who weren’t racist and had much less annoying laughs. The laugh is important, because I’m hilarious. So it’ll be something I can count on hearing a lot.