A drunkard's prayer

A few of my elderly readers will recognize the fellow in the picture above. He is Otis Campbell the town drunk of Mayberry, and a delightful fellow. Now I do not claim to be the town drunk in the city in which I reside. There are, I am sure, much more qualified candidates (some of which I know personally). Besides the city where I live has more than enough space for multiple town drunks. Therefore, I am just one of many, a bleary face in the crowd as it were. However, tonight I am breaking new ground. For the first time in the "history" of this blog I am writing while ever so slightly intoxicated. Of course ideas for blog posts have came to me while I was hammered, but not until tonight did I maintain the required dexterity to type out my brilliant drunken thoughts. The tale I have to impart is a rather sad one, but I hope to tell it without getting too maudlin. After two nights of serious drinking I feel the need for a little confession. I haunt two bars in my fair city, and pretty much only two bars. Luckily for me they are right beside one another, within easy staggering distance. I have been going to one of them about a year longer than the other one, but each of them have their pro and cons. One has a better menu and is non-smoking, while the other has a nice long bar that begs to be propped up, and cool video games to play. After as many debauched nights as I am spent in these places, I have befriended the bartenders. Going on the theory that you can never have enough bartender "friends." Each of the bartenders are lovely fellows, and both treat me much better than I deserve. One of the great tragedies of my life is that, for some reason, the two bartenders do not like each other. This has been a source of some consternation for me. It is sort of like having two best friends that can not stand each other, and you are trapped in the middle. In some respects it is not quite that serious, but in other ways it is very, very serious. Now there is enough of a drunk in me to go around, and I have been able to consistently stagger from one bar to another with alarming regularity. The tension was there, but if you tip well enough, and drink enough eventually you either smooth it over or forget all about it as you sink into an alcohol induced stupor. Sadly this week tragedy struck. One of my bartenders managed to get himself fired, not too big of a surprise considering his boss fires people as often as he changes his underwear, but still a rather upsetting turn of events. Even worse was the manner in which I was made aware of my bartender's demise. My other bartender was the first to break the news, and he did so with a thinly veiled glee that did not reflect well upon him. Saddened by this news, I stumbled next door to see if the new was in fact true. Much to my dismay, it was, and standing there behind the bar was a totally new bartender. This was a very sad occasion because a good bartender is very, very difficult to find, and training a new bartender is a task that requires a great deal of time and patience. At my age, I am not sure my liver is going to be up to the task of "breaking in" a new bartender. All sorts of things go into the process, and it can be quite expensive at first. Eventually, a good bartender will realize that they have a good solid drunk on their hands, and will make the corresponding adjustments. However, in the meantime you have to suffer being treated like a common, twice a week, amateur drinker out to drink enough sexs on the beach to set some sort of personal record. The indignity of it all is enough to make you want to become a teetotaler. Of course being sober all the time has its own pitfalls that I am not sure I am quite ready to face on a 365 day-a-year basis. So for now I will spend a little more time at the bar that still has my regular bartender employed, and stumble over to the new bar to begin the long, arduous process of training a new barkeep on the width and depth of my drunkenness. This has great potential to end in tears. I can only hope that if it does the tears are at least laced with enough alcohol to make it all worth while.