Shane's never seen this number before

I'm inspired. My friend Marc has this fantastic blog where he has been telling some pretty amazing but true stories.

So I was remembering something funny that happened to me. Well, to my wife and I... on our honeymoon.

We had decided to go to New Orleans as that would be a fun atmosphere to celebrate our nuptuals. And it was a blast too, as we got to experience everything the French Quarter had to offer between Hurricanes and Pat O'Brien's, beignets at Cafe du Monde, and alligator sausage at the various diners around town. Basically, a lot of it revolved around all of the cool food they had down there that you can't necessarily get up here.

We even had an experience where we went to Brennan's which is a famous place to catch brunch, because a guy sitting next to us on the plane told us that it was a "reasonably priced" and "low key" place to do so. So we wandered in there in our very tourist-y looking t-shirt and shorts, only to get looked up and down by the maitre-d, and get sat somewhere where absolutely nobody else could see us. You wouldn't think that they would be able to fit a table for two behind the cash register, now would you? Looking around the restaurant, we see that all of hte men are wearing suits and all of the women are wearing nice dresses. We opened our menus to find that the brunch buffet was "reasonably priced" at $35 a person. We were stunned. And then our waiter asked us what cocktail we would like with our brunch.

"Maybe a raspberry mimosa?"

"How about a sloe gin fizz?"

With breakfast? Are you kidding me? Well, at least I wasn't used to it. So, we aptly decided that this was not the place for us. I mean, it could have been... under different circumstances... like if we hadn't been lied to by the guy on the plane and severly underdressed ourselves.

So our honeymoon was really pretty good. But there was this one funny moment I'll never forget when we're walking around the French Quarter and this kid approaches us and asks us if we want free tickets to the aquarium or any other of the attractions in town. Also, there was a coupon book good for all of the local restaurants included in this package. Since we had only been in town one day and still had the rest of the week ahead of us, we were interested. But this alarming feeling went off in us when he followed up his offer with "follow me". This was New Orleans, after all.

We follow the kid for about a block, with me trying to make a mental note of all the streets we turned on so that if we needed to run away in a pinch, we could do it. We enter into this building and are told to take a seat. Almost immediately, the woman behind the counter asks us to show her proof of credit. She makes it clear that we don't need to present it to her, but we just need to hold up a credit card to prove that we can afford whatever (and we still don't know yet) is behind Door #1.

Passing the "proof of credit" test, we then move on to filling out this information sheet. Now we're really starting to get concerned. Making the right call, Cindy decides to give us fake names and a fake address. Way to go Cindy! So for the rest of this "visit", I am to now be known as "Bob" and Cindy is to be known as "Jean". And we were from Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. For the record, this is actually another married couple that we know, so it would in theory be easy for us to remember that these two names go together. Of course, that was the theory.

So we start our tour of what now appears to be a time-share in the middle of the Quarter, and we meet our new friend and tour guide Shane. We're not 5 minutes into the tour when Cindy slips up and calls me by my real name. When I get her within my own personal earshot, I grit my teeth and say to her "My name is not Mike!" She looks to see if Shane caught it. Nope, so far so good. I, for my part, did a pretty darn good job of getting her name right for the entirety of the tour.

And the place was fabulous too. Very elegant, very exciting, very unaffordable. As we will soon find out. Once the tour is over, we get lead into the "pit". This is where other couples, such as ourselves, are sitting around tables with their tour guides and talking numbers. I call it the "pit" because you just got the sense that there was a whole lot of wheeling and dealing going on and that we were going to be in way over our heads. Nothing to worry about though, as our game plan of "just hold strong and say no" was still intact.

So we get sat at this table, and Shane starts talking numbers. We give him the cold, hard truth. We are on our honeymoon and as we have just gotten married, we do not have the requisite funds it would take to afford 2 weeks at this lovely establishment. But, to his credit, he keeps working us and working us.

No go.

I think we had finally turned down an offer of $13K, before he excused himself and went over and got "the closer".

You all know who the closer is. You've seen him whenever you've gone to buy a new or used car. He's the guy who comes in and gives you the uber-hard sell after the last guy just gave you the seriously-hard sell. Well, he comes over and what-do-you-know? Somebody just gave up their time-share. He's looking to unload it in a hurry. As a result, he's got an even lower price that he's going to pitch to us. Divine Providence has smiled down upon us this day!

But here's my favorite part and also the title-plot connection. Instead of just telling us what it's going to cost us, he writes it down on a piece of paper and slides it across the table. As he's doing this he says, "Now, Shane has never seen this number before! This is special deal for you, right now!". Of course at this point I'm thinking he just saw this number like 15 minutes ago when he gave his last tour. Either that or he's got a short-term memory problem that he needs to get fixed. To add to the effect, Shane lets out an audible "whoa!" while making this fantastic look of amazement. Priceless, just priceless.

They finally cave after God-knows-how-many excruciating minutes and we're free to go with our coupon book and our tickets to the aquarium. We had a great rest of our vacation using the coupons at the local restaurants and also getting to see the famous albino aligator at the aquarium. But when it came to pure comedy, nothing beat our trip to the time-share. We'll still to this day point to signs with numbering on it and say "I wonder if Shane's ever seen that number before!" Poor Shane.

I keep having this recurring nightmare

There's 1 out in the bottom of the 8th inning of game 7 of the ALCS... the Red Sox are winning 5 to 2. The bleepin' New York Yankees are starting to string together a rally against Pedro Martinez. Runners are on first and third. Grady Little comes out of the dugout to apparently pull Pedro from the game. Since there is surely a commercial break on the horizon, I get up and go to the kitchen to get myself another beer. When I come back out, lo and behold the game is still on. I am beside myself. What happened? Why didn't he pull Pedro? This is when things get hazy and I black out. Somewhere in there some items got thrown and I power-vomited. It wasn't pretty.

What's worse is that it wasn't a nightmare. It really happened. I remember my friend Brian ticking off the outs one at a time on a napkin and telling him that it wasn't a good idea. You see, he was new to being a Red Sox fan and had not been subjected to the abject pain that the rest of us have been forced to endure. As a matter of fact, when the game was over, he calmly said "Aren't you happy about how well they did this year?". The rest of us just sneered at him. I think from a baseball standpoint we've poisoned him forever now. Innocence lost.

Is it wrong that 10 months later this still vexes me? I swear, sometimes when I'm in the car, say I'm driving to work or something, I get a sudden case of Tourette's syndrome thinking about that sequence of events from October. I still wanna yell out "Pull him Grady! Take him out!" and put my fist through the dashboard, but to no avail. I mean, what was he thinking? That Red Sox bullpen was automatic in the playoffs. You couldn't score a run off of them. So in the biggest game of the season with a trip to the World Series on the line, he decides to save Mike Timlin for what? Game 1 of the World Series? Ended up saving him for spring training instead. Ugh. And the thing is, it's almost playoff time for the season we're currently in, and I'm still upset about it.

But of course, this is the road we Red Sox fans are forced to hoe. They say that women live an average of 7 years longer than men. Well, I've got to imagine that Yankees fans live an average of 7 years longer than Red Sox fans. With all the stress we have to deal with, how can it not be so? They lead a pretty privileged existence while we have to figure out when the guillotine is going to drop. Because games like those do add up over time. I'm at least grateful that I was 10 years old and was sound asleep well before Buckner booted that one in '86.

Another statistic I've heard is that for every cigarette that one smokes, 7 minutes is taken off of that person's lifespan. And that doesn't even include the 7 or so minutes spent smoking it in the first place. So, in other words, I can't get those 3-plus hours back that I spent watching the game, and on top of that I've also got to deal with the loss of about a year of my life due to the resulting trauma. That game gave me dry heaves. I'm not kidding. The combination of beer, fried snacks, and the big sinking feeling had me on the bathroom floor making a call on the porcelain telephone.

My wife thinks I'm a big wierdo because of that. She kept asking what the hell was the matter with me. Of course, as a lifelong Sox fan herself, she was devastated too. We banded together though and decided the best course of action was to go out and get a puppy to cheer us up... a miniature female dachshund that we named "Fenway" Frankie. Isn't that sick? I need help.

But hey, whatever it takes to cope right?

Damn, stupid Grady Little. When will the torment end?