My Own Personal Afterschool Special

So I'm with the Mexican and several of my pot smoker Prague friends, sitting outside on the very small terace of this Italian place, in a winding alley a few meters off of Old Town Square. We're finishing up our food, shooting the shit, whatever, and the waitress comes over. I assume we're going to settle up; in fact, the Mexican and I start laying our money on the table like good kids. But my friends smile sweetly and wave her away. At this point, I realize that what they've been discussing at their end of the table is: Walking out on the check. And their spur-of-the-moment plan to do same.

Ohhhh shit.

Immediately, I am fucking terrified. This feeling is prompted not by my religious principles, but rather by my conventional upbringing and my ensuing deep-seated phobia of doing things that get one into BIG TROUBLE.

But look! It's too LATE!! My friends are FLYING THE FUCKING COOP!!!

So I grab my shit and run too. We tear through the winding streets towards the square, so pumped with adrenaline that we narrowly miss making a complete circle back in front of the same restaurant. And I feel all the exhilaration of running with the bad kids, of cutting class in high school, and smoking cigarettes behind buildings, and getting disastrously drunk off wine coolers. All the things, in other words, that I never fucking did in high school, not once, not ever, until I was in college and almost nineteen, in fact. Because I'm a square.

And before you start getting all afterschool special on me with the Say No to Peer Pressure talk...come ON. What the fuck else was I supposed to do? If I'd stayed there, I would have had to pay for their meals too, as well as endure some angry Czech talk, which...no. Don't like grown-ups yelling at me. Also, see above -- Aztec and I left money on the table. So we're not gonna burn. At least not for that.

And yes, as you can tell from the somewhat testy tone of the above paragraph, the Hounds of Guilt have indeed been having their way with me. Or at least, they would have, if not for:

The REAL Afterschool Special part of the story:

Jump cut to two minutes after the Heist. Watch us congregated on a street corner, trying to catch our breath between the adren-fueled giggling. Watch my hand descend in slow-mo towards the pocket where I keep my phone...and the pocket where I don't keep my phone...and all other pouches or receptacles in my possession.

Cold fingers grip my heart as the truth dawns on me: I had left it on the table at the restaurant.



Sweet. Bleeding. FUCKBALLS.



So that's the lesson for the day, kids. When circumstances force you to, y'know, skip out on the bill, please for fuck's sake make sure you've collected all your personal belongings first.

No, I'm kidding. Children, you need to pay for what you eat. Or else the Lord will humiliate you with your own stupidity.






Postscript: We tried various schemes to retrieve the phone, including persuading the innocent latecomer Jedno to call my phone and tell the people that drunken Americans had stolen it, but it didn't work. I'd estimate that it took the restaurant about 15 minutes to turn it into cold hard cash. So I did indeed pay for our meal. Dammit.

On the other hand, I bought a used phone the next day and got the same old number put on it, so we're all good. On the mutant third hand, I don't have any of your numbers anymore. So if you send me a happy text, please put your name on it. That is all.