This guy is in the bar last night, being obnoxious to this couple that just wants to have a private conversation.
When the bartender shoos him away from them, he comes over to me next, wants to play a game of pool. I figure, if it keeps the peace, how bad can one game of pool be?
He’s at the grab and hug stage of drunken rambling, going on and on about how he came to Seattle ’cause he doesn’t want to work anymore, and they won’t give him his SSI, so he’s gonna steal a car and drive it off a bridge.
Wait, what? Oh crap. So much for just a simple game of pool. I try to be helpfully sympathetic; I point out that if he isn’t taking his meds, but he tells his doctors he is, and he’s not getting any better, of course they are going to try upping the dosage, and that if he doesn’t want to take them, he doesn’t have to, so just tell the doc.
He’s a decent pool player, when he can stop wobbling long enough to get a shot off. It looks like he’s had a lot of practice playing wasted. The game takes forever, because whenever it’s his shot, he’s too busy talking more crazy at me, or wandering off around the bar looking for something in his pockets. He can’t keep track of which set of balls is his, and insists on using Bigs and Smalls as his naming convention, instead of Solids and Stripes. Which leads to me realizing that the larger numbers are indeed the Stripes, and the smaller numbers are indeed the Solids. But that’s not what he means, he makes it pretty clear he thinks the balls are actually different sizes.
After 3 games, I’m ready to sit down and enjoy a little silence somewhere away from him, so kindly thank him for the game, and disengage as best I can. It helps that the bartender won’t serve him another beer, which distracts him. “I can still walk, c’mon!” As if that’s the limit.
After he’s left, the bartender buys me a drink, thanks me for defusing the guy, and says the title line.