Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the shit-show. This past weekend, I attended the Florida Coastal Law School Charity Ball, a.k.a. “Law Prom,” with one of my lady-friends, Jenna. You may remember her from the We Started One Letter Rappin’ and That’s How it Happened post. It’s a convoluted series of events that led to my being invited anyway, so I guess I should get that out of the way first (besides, I like telling the story). I’ll present the tales of the weekend in two chapters, since it’s quite lengthy.
So I actually met Jenna last June, the night before the One Letter Rappin’ incident. I was at Fontaine’s as per usual and she came in with a group of mutual friends. She’s a law student at Florida Coastal in Jacksonville, so she was in town visiting. We were introduced, chit-chatted a bit, no big deal. I didn’t think much about it until the next day when I showed up at Anna’s house to go to the Braves game for her birthday. There Jenna was again, oddly enough.
We had a blast hanging out that day and when she left for Jacksonville again, I added her as a friend on Facebook. We’d comment on each other’s statuses and that sort of thing, then when Christmas rolled around, I sent her a message. Since her parents live near me, I thought she might be home for Christmas. That was the case, so she gave me her phone number. It was all down hill from there. A constant stream of text-babies were made, culminating in an invite to Law Prom with this Bonnie Lass.
I left Friday for Jacksonville in my new truck. For the first time in my life, I own a vehicle with less than 100,000 miles on it. I intend on keeping this one a while. I burned five Iron Maiden albums to cd to entertain myself during the five hour drive. The drive itself was fairly uneventful, but I did notice that a lot of people in Florida like to leave the freeway at a high rate of speed and slam their cars into trees. I’m serious, I saw wreckers pulling cars out of the woods no less than three times during the trip.
I made it relatively unscathed and after some sightseeing, Jenna and I joined one of her friends for dinner at one of those faux-classy new-age Mexican joints. The food was good and the cold adult beverages were cold and adult, so you’ll hear no complaints from me. Whilst we were consuming our comestibles on the patio of this restaurant, we noticed a rather large contingent of middle-schoolers milling about in the courtyard area between the restaurant and some other stores.
Middle-schoolers by themselves are no real threat, but all these kids were dressed to the nines and even more disturbingly, all alike. All the boys were wearing black suits with white shirts and all the girls were wearing blue dresses. My first thought was that they were Heaven’s Gate reincarnated, but that seemed unlikely, since that cult essentially killed itself off. As we finished our supper, the kids seemed to be congregating by the patio fence near our table. Since I recently watched Lord of the Flies, I made sure to yell out that I had the Conch, but I believe the reference was missed. Kids these days just aren’t as cultured.
Julie, our other acquaintance, was the first to speak up. “Are y’all going to serenade us?” She asked of the girl standing nearest. “Um, no. We’re waiting for that table.” She responded, “Why do you ask?” (It should be noted that these dozen or so kids were all lined up beside the fence glaring intently at a large table of patrons.) “You’re all dressed alike and you’re grouped together like you’re about to burst into song.” (I’m pretty sure that she didn’t actually talk like this, but she’s from Pittsburgh, and their speech patterns just don’t translate to text well.)
This seemed to startle the girl, and she wandered off to the back of the group. They stood there for a few more moments until the patrons at the table noticed them, then the teens toddled back over to the fountain to sway awkwardly from foot to foot while they discussed how angsty their lives were.
God ‘tweens are creepy.
After a change of clothes, we decided to hit up some of the beach bars. The scene there is slightly different than I’m used to. I typically avoid the “fist-pumping” crowd, but that’s exactly what the scene was here. Guys in Affliction t-shirts with faux-hawks. They’re also all ripped, although that shouldn’t be viewed as an insult, since I’m a lazy narrow-ass. Basically, it looked a lot like the Caucasian Jersey Shore.
Probably the coolest thing about the bars are the size of the drinks. We walked into one bar and one of the other girls got the first round of drinks. Somehow, I wound up with a Vodka and Soda. Not my favorite, but it came in a FREAKING PINT GLASS! I was not aware that Large Farva was an available alcoholic beverage size. Totally tits!
My intent was to try and keep it between the ditches that night so I was in good shape for the actual Charity Ball on Saturday, but when you have pint sized liquor drinks at reasonable prices staring you in the face, even the best laid plans of men and mice go awry. Needless to say, we got liquored up. We danced, we laughed and we cried and we watched an endless stream of Persians hit on Jenna’s friend. It never gets old.
One more quick note before I sign off until Chapter 2. We got a taxi back over towards the apartments, and we dropped off Jenna’s friends first. The taxi cab driver told us we could pay with a credit card so that’s what we decided to do. This worked out swimmingly for Jenna’s two friends, but when it came time for me to pay, conveniently enough, the driver was out of imprint slips. This resulted in us having to go to the damn ATM so I could get cash and of course he charged me for that. I knocked it off the tip though, so take that, Taxi Man!
Stay tuned for Chapter 2: Night of the Living Law Prom…
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